He believed that he had a grudge against his father, and the general opinion of him was that he was wholly unscrupulous.
That he should, then, be in secret communication with a servant at Lynnwood, struck him as a very serious matter, indeed.

Charlie was not yet sixteen, but his close companionship with his father had rendered him older than most lads of his age.

He was as warm a Jacobite as his father, but the manner in which William, with his Dutch troops, had crushed the great Jacobite rebellion in Ireland, seemed to him a lesson that the prospects of success, in England, were much less certain than his father believed them to be.
John Dormay, as an adherent of William, would be interested in thwarting the proposed movement, with the satisfaction of, at the same time, bringing Sir Marmaduke into disgrace.

Charlie could hardly believe that his cousin would be guilty of setting a spy to watch his father, but it was certainly possible, and as he thought the matter over, as he rode back after escorting Ciceley to her home, he resolved to keep a sharp watch over the doings of this man Nicholson.
"It would never do to tell my father what Ciceley said.

He would bundle the fellow out, neck and crop, and perhaps break some of his bones, and then it would be traced to her.