But as the Lady of Drumsheugh did not see fit to cause an investigation, to cross-question her son, or to go out of her way to assail and harass Peggy; as Peggy’s mother in her box-bed did not stir in the matter by proxy; as it was the old daffing intercourse between the laird and the lass, which was openly resumed, and went on much as formerly to hoodwink the public, what was everybody’s business proved nobody’s business. Nothing was said or done to clear up the mystery as to the precise terms on which the Laird of Drumsheugh stood with the lass of low degree. FOOTNOTES: [3] He’s low down, he’s in the broom, That’s waiting for me. CHAPTER III. PEGGY’S WELCOME HOME. Balcairnie could have spoken out and enlightened the neighbourhood, but he did not. Affectionately attached as he was both to Drumsheugh and Peggy, he had not as yet any strong temptation to speak out and shame the Devil, while delivering his victims. Granted that the position was most awkward and indefensible, it had not become so untenable as to shock and scare a man like Balcairnie--not wholly unaccustomed to such difficult conditions--into breaking his word and exposing the offenders, with whom he had been ‘art and part,’ for the good of one or both. It was hardly possible that Drumsheugh’s passion would remain at its first white heat. It was too probable that it might pass into weariness, even disgust, where the poor girl he had married was concerned. True, there had been no such fundamental disparity between the two as may be imagined. Still, Drumsheugh was a man with a man’s power of varying his life. He could not rid himself of his blue blood and his lairdship. The likelihood was that the longer he lived their claims on him would increase and intensify, till what he had slighted in his youth might, in inverse proportion, become a heavy chain on his mature years. He might come to clutch his hereditary advantages and brandish them in a surly fashion in the face of poor Peggy, who not only lacked such on her own account, but would to a considerable extent qualify and damage her husband’s privileges. The shallowness of the laird’s nature, in the middle of its single-heartedness and transparency, would tend to this result. In the meantime Peggy, arrested and isolated by her own deed, instead of moving on and becoming transplanted, would stand still or retrograde in her false suspended position. Half envied, half doubted, and blamed by her former equals, wholly distrusted and shunned by those who were still her social superiors, her heart would grow sick under the painful ordeal, her gentle, modest nature wax bold and defiant. The very appearance of evil--which is to be avoided in its turn--would work much of the harm of the evil itself.