Gwynne. In the fall of 1901, the Paris money lender filed suit against Gwynne, for an unpaid loan of nearly $50,000 for diamonds. Shortly after his mother's death, in June 1902, Edward Gwynne filed a petition in bankruptcy, with liabilities of over $56,000 and assets of $57. Two years later, on May 10, 1904, Preston's father died of acute kidney problems at the age of 35, on the same day the case of the suit was to be brought up in the court. Preston was five years old at the time. After Louise Gwynne's death, the property that had been conveyed to her by her son was held in trust for Preston and her siblings. However, in February 1908, the Paris money lender revived his legal attack against the Gwynnes, demanding their property on the unpaid loan of $40,000. In March, following a long discussion, the suit against the Gwynnes was dismissed. The judge ruled that the realty transfer performed by Edward to his mother was not made with the intent to defraud creditors. However, he also spoke rather harshly of Preston's father, referring to him as a man who "may have had large expectancies, but seems to have been a drain upon his mother's financial resources". Following her father's death, Preston was mostly raised in Paris, together with her brothers, although the family occasionally returned to their New York residence for brief periods of time. Preston was also educated in England. The money lender continued with a series of court appeals between 1910 and 1912, although the Gwynne family managed to emerge victorious from the lengthy legal battle. According to writers Lynn Kear and John Rossman, Preston also worked as a cabaret performer in her youth. Marriages and Happy Valley In 1919, she married Horace R. Bigelow Allen, after he completed his service with the United States Army. In later years, Allen became an executive in a plastics corporation. Preston and Horace had a daughter, Alice Gwynne Allen, who later married pilot officer Geoffrey Borden Russell, as well as a son, Ethan Allen. Living in Paris with her husband, Preston met and befriended some of the future key members of the Happy Valley set, such as Alice de Janzé and Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll. The Happy Valley set was a community of mainly British expatriates in Kenya, in the Wanjohi Valley close to the Aberdare Mountains, which