"Your father had been a widower nearly two years when we were married," said Rachel, steadily.
"Why doesn't Kenneth spell his name as we do?"
"Gwyn is the way it was spelled a great many years ago, and it is the correct way, according to your father. It was his father, I believe, who added the last two letters,—I do not know why, unless it was supposed to be more elegant."
"It seems strange that he should spell it one way and his own son another," ventured the girl, unsatisfied.
"Kenneth was brought up to spell it in the new-fangled way, I guess," was Rachel Gwyn's reply. "You need not ask me questions about the family, Viola. Your father never spoke of them. I am afraid he was not on good terms with them. He was a strange man. He kept things to himself. I do not recollect ever hearing him mention his first wife or his son or any other member of his family in,—well, in twenty years or more."
"I should think you would have been a little bit curious. I know I should."
"I knew all that was necessary for me to know," said Rachel, somewhat brusquely.
"Can't you tell me something more about father's people?" persisted the girl.
"I only know that they lived in Baltimore. They never came west. Your father was about twenty years old when he left home and came to Kentucky. That is all I know, so do not ask any more questions."
"He never acted like a backwoodsman," said Viola. "He did not talk like one or—"