Peggy proved herself a harmless, guileless, fond and faithful creature. She was meek in her exaltation, which, to begin with, consisted mainly of the liberty to nurse day and night a young man who had been too much spoilt by rude health, an active life, and the getting of his own way, though it had not necessarily been a base--not even a mean and heartless way--to come out strong as a patient, considerate invalid. The old lady opened her eyes more and more to the truth, and did not repent of her wise generosity. She was won so far as to take Peggy into a degree of favour on her own account. Still, there could not fail to be an amount of reaction here also. Mrs. Ramsay made the best of Peggy: she brought herself to think that the laird’s mother might be the most suitable person to train the laird’s wife and to mould her in the course of years into the future Lady as well as mistress of Drumsheugh. She, the present Lady, might do it and get over the contact with all Peggy’s innumerable rusticities and gaucheries, not merely out of unselfish regard for her son, but because of some grains of tenderness already springing up, whether she would or not, in her by no means unmotherly heart, for her daughter. Poor little Peggy Hedderwick that was, had been thrust on an undesirable eminence, which brought her in unsuitable rivalry--not with one alone, but with every former aggrieved Lady of Drumsheugh; yet Peggy deferred so sincerely to Mrs. Ramsay in the smallest particular, and looked up to her from such a lowly depth of respect that was almost awe, and of gratitude which in its intensity was well-nigh anguish, that the worst part of the offence became cancelled. But when all was said and done, it galled and fretted Mrs. Ramsay’s proud, punctilious nature to see Peggy scared and ashamed, floundering and bungling hugely and grotesquely whenever she could not avoid taking the place which had been vacated to her. For the old lady did nothing by halves. The head of the dinner-table, the central seat on the principal settee in the drawing-room, the top of the front gallery ‘bucht’ in Craigture Kirk, the front seat of that coach which Balcairnie had not caused to be driven to the Cotton to bring Peggy home, the ordering of the servants, the receiving of the guests--all belonged now to Peggy’s duties and privileges. She might discharge them very unworthily, but she might not refuse to accept them; and no third person who had Peggy’s interest at heart might decline them for her or appropriate them in order to save her from suffering. This was not to be done for young Mrs. Ramsay’s own sake, to avoid injuring her fatally, since if any rash, short-sighted person were to interfere and adopt this course, worse would be sure to come of it, and for the sake of shielding her present the poor young woman’s future would be irretrievably ruined.