"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 ho 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 — appear ing document, which she and Henry had read through, and throw her arms, whole-heartedly and freely about his neck, and wholeheartedly and freely kiss him on the lips. Next, Enrico saw Henry step back and exclaim in a dazed, heart-broken way:
"But, my God, Leoncia! This is the end of everything. Never can we be husband and wife!"
"Eh?" Enrico snorted. "When everything was arranged! What do you mean, sir? This is an insult! Marry you shall, and marry to-day!"
Henry, almost in stupefaction, looked to Leoncia to speak for him.
"It is against God's law and man's," she said, "for a man to marry his sister. Now I understand my strange love for Henry. He is my brother. We are full brother and sister, unless these documents lie."
And Yi Poon knew that he could take report to Torres that the marriage would not take place and would never take place.
CHAPTER XXIV
CATCHING a United Fruit Company boat at Colon within fifteen minutes after landing from the small coaster, the Queen's progress with Francis to New York had been a swift rush of fortunate connections. At New Orleans a taxi from the wharf to the station and a racing of porters with hand luggage had barely got them aboard the train just as it started. Arrived at New York, Francis had been met by Bascom, in Francis' private machine, and the rush had continued to the rather ornate palace R.H.M. himself, Francis' father, had built out of his millions on Riverside Drive.