Toward night the wind veered around, and the fog lifted, showing first the line of houses along the bluff, then the nearest reefs, and finally lifting the veil which all day had obscured the furthest point of mainland. At last but a dim line of gray along the horizon told that out at sea the fog horns must continue to sound their warning. The long grass, however, was still very wet, and Gwen decided that a second tramp across the hummocks would be better left undone, so she and her aunt, avoiding the dampness below, took refuge on the little balcony over the porch where they were sheltered from the wind.
"Aunt Cam," said Gwen, leaning her chin on her hands and looking off toward Seguin's shining light, "when we go back I'd like to see something of my father's people. What relatives had he?"
"Very few are left," returned Miss Elliott. "His mother died when he was still a child, his father before he married. He was an only child, therefore there would be only some cousins. The family was from northern New York. We could go there some time instead of coming here, but I fancy you would not find any very near relatives, or indeed any who could tell you much of your father. He had not been thrown with them very often, and scarce at all after he was grown."
"His father was a great friend of grandfather's, wasn't he?"
"A great friend though a younger man by some fifteen years. Your grandfather did not marry till he was thirty-five; Lewis Whitridge's father married early."
"I see. Were there only business letters in that box, Aunt Cam? None from my father to my mother?"
"No, as they lived in the same city there was little correspondence between them. I had one or two letters from Lewis, while I was in China, but I destroyed the most of my correspondence before I left there, so those with others, were burned."
"Was my father ever well off? I know mamma had nothing, but had he?"
"He was supposed to be quite well off when your mother married him, unusually so for so young a man."
"Was that why she married him?" Gwen shifted the position of her hands that she might better see a figure on the rocks, distinct against the sky, an immovable figure with back toward Wits' End.