Kristen Ravn had lost her mother at her birth and her father when she was five years old.  The latter left her a handsome fortune, with the express condition that the investments should not be changed, and that the income should be for her own use whether she married or not.  He hoped by this means to form her character.  She was brought up by three different members of her wide-branching family, a family which might more properly be termed a clan, although they had no common characteristics beyond a desire to go their own way.

When two Ravns meet they, as a rule, differ on every subject; but as a race they hold religiously together—­indeed, in their eyes there is no other family which is “amusing,” the favourite adjective of the Ravns.

Kristen had a receptive nature; she read everything, and remembered what she read; that is say, she had a logical mind, for a retentive memory implies an orderly brain.  She was consequently number one in everything which she took up.  This, coupled with the fact that she lived among those who regarded her somewhat as a speculation, and consequently flattered her, had early made an impression on her nature, quite as great, indeed, as the possession of money.

She was by no means proud, it was not in the Ravn nature to be so; but at ten years old she had left off playing; she preferred to wander in the woods and compose ballads.  At twelve she insisted on wearing silk dresses, and, in the teeth of an aunt all curls and lace and with a terrible flow of words, she carried her point.  She held herself erect and prim in her silks, and still remained number one.  She composed verses about Sir Adge and Maid Else, about birds and flowers and sad things.

On reaching the age at which other girls, who have the means, begin to wear silk dresses, she left them off.  She was tired, she said, of the “smooth and glossy.”

She now grew enthusiastic for fine wool and expensive velvet of every shade.  Dresses in the Renaissance style became her favourites, and the subject of her studies.  She puffed out her bodices like those in Leonardo’s and Rafael’s portraits of women, and tried in other ways as well to resemble them.

She left off writing verses, and wrote stories instead; the style was good, though they were anything rather than spontaneous.

They were short, with a more or less clear pointe.  Stories by a girl of eighteen do not as a general rule make a sensation, but these were particularly audacious.  It was evident that their only object was to scandalise.  Instead of her own name she used the nom-de-plume of “Puss.”  This, however, was only to postpone the announcement that the author who scandalised her readers most, and that at a time when every author strove to do so, was a girl of eighteen belonging to one of the first families in the country.

Soon every one knew that “Puss” was she of the tumbled red locks, “the tall Renaissance figure with the Titian hair.”