Nor was Michael Sinson more at his ease. He had gone to London before the party at Pendarrel, to consult Mr. Truby, and to see his bondman, Everope. It was essential that he should maintain his influence over the latter unbroken, and keep him well prepared for the part he was to play. He was greatly startled himself by being summoned as a witness for the defendant. He had intended, indeed, to go down to the assizes, but he did not mean to appear. He should remain in the background, while his creature did his work. He trembled to think of the confessions into which he might be driven or led by the searching questions of counsel; but still more he alarmed himself by imagining that his opponents had obtained some clue to his design, and that some strange exposure awaited him in court. He was, however, now so deeply involved, that he could only strengthen himself with his old hopes, and abide the issue in patience. His aged grandmother was at least as much perplexed as himself. Ever since her favourite Michael had dropped his dark hint in her ear respecting the marriage, she had harped upon the subject in her muttered soliloquies, and ruminated upon it as she swung to and fro in her rocking-chair. And in the confusion of her ideas she fancied, on receiving her summons, that there was a plot on foot by which the Trevethlans desired to free themselves from the connection with her family, and willingly transferred to Randolph the passing reproaches with which at times she upbraided Michael Sinson. It was idle to reason with her. "Ay, Squire Trevethlan," she cried to him one day, as he was strolling in the neighbourhood of her lodge, in the vain hope of quieting his renewed anxiety by another meeting with Mildred. "The son steps worthily in the path of the father! And so thou wouldst be quit of the peasant blood, wouldst thou? Wouldst disown thy kindred? But na, na,--the ties are too strong. It's none so easy to break a mother's memory. My Margaret was fit for the wife of a king, and more than fit to be the mother of such as thee." "Who has been talking to you now, dame?" Randolph asked. "Who has been putting these notions in your head? Did I ever wish to disown her? Would I not give anything to bring her back? Would I not love her and honour her? And did I not tell you I had seen her, and she smiled upon me? She has come often since, and always with the same sweet smile." He fancied the old woman had been tampered with, and wished to know the particulars. "I dinna believe thee," Maud answered; "I dinna believe it at all: and they say she has walked in the castle indeed, but no with a smiling face. She came to warn thee, grandson Randolph. And well she might. Well she might wander there, where she was let to pine and pine, and no one of all her own people let to come nigh her. And most of all now, when her own son would put her out of her rightful place. Shame upon him!"