"She told me nothing that—"
"Jist a minute, Mr. Gwynne," said Striker, laying his hand on the rider's knee. Kenneth drew rein. "I guess maybe you didn't know who she was talkin' about at the time, but it was your father she was describin'. We all three knowed somethin' that you didn't know, an' it's only fair fer me to tell you the truth, now that she's out of the way. That girl was Viola Gwyn, an' she's your half-sister."
CHAPTER V — REFLECTIONS AND AN ENCOUNTER
The sun was barely above the eastward wall of trees when Kenneth and his man rode away from the home of Phineas Striker. Their progress was slow and arduous, for the black mud was well up to the fetlocks of the horses in this new road across the boggy clearing. He rode ahead, as was the custom, followed a short distance behind by his servant on the strong, well-laden pack-horse.
The master was in a thoughtful, troubled mood. He paid little attention to the glories of the fresh spring day. What he had just heard from the lips of the settler disturbed him greatly. That beautiful girl his half-sister! The child of his own father and the hated Rachel Carter! Rachel Carter, the woman he had been brought up to despise, the harlot who had stolen his father away, the scarlet wanton at whose door the death of his mother was laid! That evil woman, Rachel Carter!
Could she, this foulest of thieves, be the mother of so lovely, so sensitive, so perfect a creature as Viola Gwyn?
As he rode frowningly along, oblivious to the low chant of the darkey and the song of the first spring warblers, he revisualized the woman he had known in his earliest childhood. Strangely enough, the face of Rachel Carter had always remained more firmly, more indelibly impressed upon his memory than that of his own mother.
This queer, unusual circumstance may be easily, reasonably accounted for: his grandfather's dogged, almost daily lessons in hate. He was not allowed to forget Rachel Carter,—not for one instant. Always she was kept before him by that bitter, vindictive old man who was his mother's father,—even up to the day that he lay on his deathbed. Small wonder, then, that his own mother's face had faded from his memory while that of Rachel Carter remained clear and vivid, as he had known it now for twenty years. The passing years might perforce bring about changes in the face and figure of Rachel Carter, but they could not, even in the smallest detail, alter the picture his mind's eye had carried so long and faithfully. He could think of her only as she was when he last saw her, twenty years ago: tall and straight, with laughing eyes and white teeth, and the colour of tan-bark in her cheeks.