“Not quite. But he’s not right. Yet he’s not a fool. I wish he were. In some ways he’s damnably intelligent. Horribly so.”
Luke sat rubbing his chin. All his training and experience shied at the pitfall which he saw opening before him, and yet his human judgment told him it did not exist and that the man, however misguided, was at least honest.
“Sons tend to take after their mothers,” he began slyly.
“The ward-maid? Agnes Leach? Of course I’ve thought of that.” Cornish dismissed the inference with a gesture. “The nuns thought of it. They suspected me and insisted that they brought the woman while they watched us to see if there was recognition there. I could have been lying. All the story of my first wife could have been a fiction. I admit that.”
“No, no sir,” Luke was laughing softly.
