She caught his hand and pressed it against her heart.
“There! For the last time! Now go!”
But his arms were around her, and she could not help but yield her lips. Again she tore herself away, this time fleeing to the doorway. Francis bowed his head to her decision, then picked up her picture.
“I shall keep this,” he announced.
“You oughtn’t to,” she flashed a last fond smile at him. “You may,” she added, as she turned and was gone.
Yet Yi Poon had a commission to execute, for which Torres had paid him one hundred gold in advance. Next morning, with Francis and the Queen hours departed on their way to Colon, Yi Poon arrived at the Solano hacienda. Enrico, smoking a cigar on the veranda and very much pleased with himself and all the world and the way the world was going, recognized and welcomed Yi Poon as his visitor of the day before. Even ere they talked, Leoncia’s father had dispatched Alesandro for the five hundred pesos agreed upon. And Yi Poon, whose profession was trafficking in secrets, was not averse to selling his secret the second time. Yet was he true to his salt, in so far as he obeyed Torres’ instructions in refusing to tell the secret save in the presence of Leoncia and Henry.
“That secret has the string on it,” Yi Poon apologized, after the couple had been summoned, as he began unwrapping the parcel of proofs. “The Senorita Leoncia and the man she is going to marry must first, before anybody else, look at these things. Afterward, all can look.”
“Which is fair, since they are more interested than any of us,” Enrico conceded grandly, although at the same time he betrayed his eagerness by the impatience with which he motioned his daughter and Henry to take the evidence to one side for examination.
He tried to appear uninterested, but his side-glances missed nothing of what they did. To his amazement, he saw Leoncia suddenly cast down a legal-appearing document, which she and Henry had read through, and throw her arms, whole-heartedly and freely about his neck, and whole-heartedly and freely kiss him on the lips. Next, Enrico saw Henry step back and exclaim in a dazed, heart-broken way: