Jenny, triumphing in an unhallowed victory over all obstacles, sought to get Peggy too in her power, as she had got Cunnings. And Peggy had no defence from Jenny’s wily stratagems and bold, fierce assaults, except God’s grace and her own good intentions. She was not wise, but she had grown up pious and dutiful, faithful and tender of conscience as of heart. It remained to be seen whether God and goodness alone would suffice to protect Peggy from Jenny, the flesh, and the devil--all the evil influences to which her husband’s thoughtlessness and Mrs. Ramsay’s mistake had given her over. Balcairnie could not interfere or come to Peggy’s rescue, though he was in a position to be soon aware of the mischief which was going on. Balcairnie was, to a great extent, gagged, if not tongue-tied. He was not one of those impulsive, inconsiderate male-friends who figure in so many stories, and by way of helping the women, for whom the men are supposed to have some regard, rush rashly into the breach, indulge in a great deal of foolish Platonic philandering, and precipitate the wrong they have been solicitous to avert. The Scotch yeoman was a man of another sort. He possessed straightforward honesty and common sense approaching to sagacity in his slowness and solidity of intellect. He was further endowed with some of the delicacy of feeling and action in which those fine gentlemen of fiction are often curiously deficient. He knew perfectly well that it was not in his honorary office of farm-manager to go much about the young Lady of Drumsheugh and attempt to control her in her domestic concerns. To do so would be to draw down upon both the strongly-flavoured gossip of the country side. It would be to take a liberty which not even his intimacy with his laird could freely warrant, and which Drumsheugh, easy-going as he was, might very possibly resent. In that case Balcairnie would have played beautifully into Jenny Hedderwick’s hands. No, he was aware from the beginning that he must stand at a distance, and only come forward if matters went utterly amiss so as to forebode a grand catastrophe. CHAPTER VI. ‘LADY PEGGY.’