No, as Peggy had brewed she must drink--as she had aspired, and by what would universally be held a wonderful stroke of good fortune, gained her aspirations, she must consent to rise to them, and fit herself for a new sphere. She must learn to live up to the blue china of a hundred years ago. She must agree to learn the lessons of her womanhood, with whatever toil and torture; she must struggle upwards against overwhelming obstacles and crushing defeats; she must resign in exchange for her dearly bought success, all the peace, ease, and happy equality of her hardest day’s work as a labouring woman. There were others besides Peggy who had to endure mental pain when Drumsheugh was sufficiently recovered to quit the retirement of his rooms and appear even in the small publicity of family life. At first, though the news had gone abroad at once, as the Lady had intended it should, since the marriage was confessed and could never be controverted, that Peggy Hedderwick had been acknowledged in the presence of the household of Drumsheugh, and received by the mother of the laird, as Jamie Ramsay’s wife, there were few witnesses of the cotter’s girl’s lack of qualifications for her dignities. Only the doctor and the minister and Drumsheugh’s confidant, Balcairnie, besides Mrs. Ramsay and Peggy, and the elder servants, entered the sick room. These spectators were bound in honour to keep their own counsel on the subject of Peggy’s mistakes and eccentricities. Besides, when a man lies hovering between life and that death which ends all social distinctions, grades and rank, with their different standards and clashing practices, dwindle into vagueness and unreality. Love may be as strong as death, and so capable of doing battle with the last enemy; but there is a tendency, even in the noblest antecedents, the best breeding, and the most polished manners, to collapse before the primitive foe with his rude directness of dealing. It hardly signified in these circumstances whether Peggy were a laird’s or a hind’s daughter, though it did matter still that she was Drumsheugh’s first and last love, that it was to her his eye turned in every wrestle with the assailant, that her voice could soothe or rouse him when not even his mother’s tones could penetrate through the turmoil of unaccustomed torture, fever, and weakness under which his senses were reeling.