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148 whose shimmering, puffing sleeves her arms glowed like frosted gold; over her bare shoulders a jusi pañuelo was lightly laid, the two ends meeting upon her breast in a golden brooch. She swept gracefully through the room, her bracelets clinking on her wrists, toward Huston, whom she had met before, shook hands with him Anglo-Saxon style, bowed to the Maestro, calmly ignored Ledesma, and whirred down into the depths of a cane chair.

"Huston," said the Maestro, gravely, "I want you to marry these two people."

But the missionary, so far petrified with wonder, suddenly rebelled. "Look here, Paul," he burst out, "what kind of a thing are you getting me into? To me it looks—well, at least irregular, very irregular. To tell the truth, old fellow, your actions seem to me—er—well, singular, very singular. I—you"

"You just leave this thing to me," interrupted the Maestro, with an authoritative nod toward the poor churchman, whose protesting attitude was fast oozing away in the subtle sense of inferiority still sticking to him from the days when the Maestro was gridiron captain and star and he a humble "scrub"; "you just leave that to me. Go ahead with the ceremony; that's all you have to do!"

But, with the courage of the meek, Huston fought on. "I at least must know," he said, firmly,