That simple fact was far more than the Duke had bargained for. A look of dismay came upon him, he shook an ominous head. “It throws a new light on the matter,” he said, after a pause, painful in its intensity. “Now tell me this—did he see the child?”
“Oh, yes!”
“That helps him to put two and two together at any rate.” A look of tragic concern came into his face. “What an amazing world!”
She agreed that the world was amazing. And in spite of the strange unhappiness in her eyes she could not help smiling a little as a surge of memories came upon her. She sighed softly, even tenderly as she made the confession. “To my mind, Sir Dugald Maclean is one of the most amazing men in it.”
“Have you any particular reason for saying that?”—The gaze was disconcerting in its keenness—“apart, I mean, from the mere obvious facts of his career?”
“It is simply that I have watched him rise,” said Harriet, between a smile and a sigh. “When I knew him first he was a London policeman.”
“How in the world did he persuade Scotland Yard to part with him?” scoffed his Grace. “One would have thought such a fellow would have been worth his weight in gold.”
She could not repress a laugh which to herself seemed to verge on irreverence. “My brother-in-law says he soon convinced them he was far too ambitious for the Metropolitan Police Force.”
“I should say so!”
“And then he studied the law and got into parliament.”