purple text in html version viewed in Gmail

Hi, I'm using Uemail to generate some emails to confirm when a person registers for something. We're finding that if the recipient uses gmail, some or all of the text sometimes shows up in purple rather than black, like you might see in a visited link, though the text in question is not a link.

When the emails are viewed in another client, like Outlook, the text is black. When a recipient who sees it in purple in Gmail goes to forward it, the forwarded version will be black.

I've tried adding inline CSS to force the text to be black, as it disturbs the client that the color is not uniform, and this works. But it's a bit of a bother and we're just wondering why this should be necessary.

I suspect the answer has something to do with gmail, but it's obscure to me. Since we're in the testing phase, we've received many copies of the email in question, usually with some small differences, but similar enough that gmail is bunching them together as belonging to the same thread.

Anyone else encountered this quirk?

Barbara