The boy had come to live at Elmhurst when he was a mere child, but only
as a dependent upon the charities of Aunt Jane, who had accepted the
charge of the orphan because he was a nephew of her dead lover, who had
bequeathed her his estate of Elmhurst. Aunt Jane was Kenneth's aunt
merely in name, since she had never even married the uncle to whom she
had been betrothed, and who had been killed in an accident before the
boy was born.

She was an irritable old woman, as Kenneth knew her, and had never shown
him any love or consideration. He grew up in a secluded corner of the
great house, tended merely by servants and suffered to play in those
quarters of the ample grounds which Aunt Jane did not herself visit. The
neglect which Kenneth had suffered and his lonely life had influenced
the youth's temperament, and he was far from being an agreeable
companion at the time Aunt Jane summoned her three nieces to Elmhurst in
order to choose one of them as her heiress. These girls, bright, cheery
and wholesome as they were, penetrated the boy's reserve and drew him
out of his misanthropic moods. They discovered that he had remarkable
talent as an artist, and encouraged him to draw and paint, something he
had long loved to do in secret.

Then came the great surprise of the boy's life, which changed his
condition from one of dependency into affluence. Aunt Jane died and it
was discovered that she had no right to transfer the estate to one of
her nieces, because by the terms of his uncle's deed to her the property
reverted on her death to Kenneth himself. Louise Merrick, Beth DeGraf
and Patsy Doyle, the three nieces, were really glad that the boy
inherited Elmhurst, and returned to their eastern homes with the most
cordial friendship existing between them all.