But she could not please them, because she herself could find no pleasure in their life. She did not say to herself that she was better than they. Still less did she thank God that she was not as they were. But she felt with piteous keenness the gulf that separated her alike from her parents and from her sister. She loved her father, and admired his good impulses and amiable character. But she perceived that his contentment in a life of busy idleness made him constitutionally unable to enter fully into her state of mind. She loved her mother, and considered that she was, within her range, a woman of genius. "She has the genius of order," she wrote in a character-sketch of her mother, "the genius to organize a parish, to form society. She has obtained by her own exertions the best society in England." What pained the daughter was the inability to please the mother. "When I feel her disappointment in me, it is as if I was becoming insane." She loved her sister also, and, I think, yet more tenderly. But as the sister once wrote: "The natures God has given us differ as widely as different races." Florence was deeply sensible of the attractive side of her sister's character. Lady Verney had indeed a most attractive mind; she was very vivacious, inquiring, and highly gifted, both as an artist and as a writer. She was a perfect hostess, and her memory is pleasant to all who knew her. If she lacked some of her sister's stronger English characteristics, she had a light touch which Florence did not possess. And Florence felt the charm of all this. "No one less than I," she wrote, "wants her to do one single thing different from what she does. She wants no other religion, no other occupation, no other training than what she has. She has never had a difficulty except with me; she knows nothing of struggle in her own unselfish nature." But for that very reason she could not sympathize with, because she could not understand, her sister's difficulties. In a passage which is doubtless autobiographical, Florence wrote: "Very few people can sympathise with each other in any pursuit or thought of any importance. If people do not give you thought for thought, receive yours, digest it, and give it back with the impression of their own character upon it, then give you one for you to do likewise, it is best to know what one is about, and not to attempt more than kindly, cheerful outward intercourse. Some find amusement in the outward, do not suffer inwardly, because the attention is turned elsewhere."[54] Meanwhile Florence felt that everything she said or did was a subject of vexation to her sister, a disappointment to her mother, a worry to her father. "I have never known a happy time," she exclaimed to herself, "except at Rome and that fortnight at Kaiserswerth. It is not the unhappiness I mind, it is not indeed; but people can't be unhappy without making those about them so." [54] _Suggestions for Thought_, vol. ii. pp. 236, 237.