The mischief was that all of his own tremendous energy which Stephen Minster had transmitted to the generation following him was concentrated in this eldest child of his. The son had been a lightheaded weakling. The other daughter, Ethel, was as fragile and tenderly delicate as a Christmas rose. But Kate had always been the strong one of the family, physically vigorous, restive under unintelligent discipline, rebellious to teachers she disliked, and proudly confident of her position, her ability, and the value of her plans and actions. She had loved her father passionately, and never ceased to mourn that, favorite of his though she was, business cares had robbed her of so much of his company for years before his death. As a girl she had dreamed her dreams--bold, sweepingly ambitious visions they were; but this father of whom she was so proud, this powerful father who had so manfully subdued things under his feet, was always the one who was to encompass their fulfilment. When he died, her aêrial castles at a stroke tumbled into chaos. All her plans and aspirations had turned upon him as their pivot. Without him all was disorganized, shapeless, incomprehensible. Nearly three years had gone by, and still matters about her and possibilities before her alike refused to take on definite outlines. She still did not do today the things she wanted to do, yet felt as powerless as ever to tell what her purposes for to-morrow clearly were. All the conditions for achievement were hers to command, and there was nothing to achieve. There was something alike grotesque and pathetic in the record of her attempts to find work. She had gathered at considerable expense all the books and data she could learn about relating to the life and surroundings of Lady Arabella Stuart, and had started to write what should be the authoritative work on the subject, only to discover that she did not know how to make a book, and would not want to make that kind of a book if she had known how. She had begun collections of orchids, of coins, of engraved portraits, of cameos, and, at varying times, of kindred other trifles, and then on some gray and rainy morning had found herself impelled to turn upon each of these in its order with disgust and wrath. For music she unluckily had no talent, and a very exhaustive and costly outfit of materials for a painter’s studio amused her for less than one short month. She had a considerable feeling for color, but was too impatient to work laboriously at the effort to learn to draw; and so she hated her pictures while they were being painted, and laughed scornfully at them afterward. She wrote three or four short stories, full of the passions she had read about, and was chagrined to get them back from a whole group of polite but implacable editors. Embroidery she detested, and gardening makes one’s back ache.