For a time we did correspond very regularly--for nearly a year. During this period her life was an unpausing whirl of dissipation. Balls, visits, operas, and concerts during the season in town were succeeded in the country by more balls, and hunting, and skating, and the usual round of amusements that make up a gay country life. Mary was everywhere the beauty of the place, the admired of all admirers. Strange to say, in spite of her acknowledged supremacy, she made no enemies. Perhaps it would have been stranger still if she had. Her sweet, artless manner and perfect unconsciousness of self went for at least as much in the admiration she excited as her beauty. If she danced every dance at every ball, it was never once for the pleasure of saying she did it, of triumphing over other girls, but for the genuine pleasure of the dance itself. Her success was so gratuitous, so little the result of coquetry on her side, that, however much it might be envied, it was impossible to resent it. I am not trying to make out a case for Mary, or to excuse, still less justify, the levity of the life she was leading at this time. My only aim is to convey a true idea of the spirit in which she was leading it--mere exuberance of spirits, the zest of youth in the gay opportunities that were showered upon her path. She was revelling like a butterfly in flowers and sunshine. The spirit of worldliness in its true and worst sense did not possess her; did not even touch her. Its cankerous breath had not blown upon her soul and blighted it; the worm had not eaten into her heart and hardened it. Both were still sound--only drunk; intoxicated with the wine of life. She went waltzing through flames, like a moth round a candle; like a child letting off rockets, and clapping hands with delight at the pretty blue blaze, without fear or thought of danger. There was no such thing as premeditated infidelity in her mind. She was not playing a deliberate game with God; bidding him wait till she was ready, till she was tired of the world and the world of her. No, she was utterly incapable of such a base and guilty calculation. She had simply forgotten that she had a soul to save. The still, small voice that had spoken to her in earlier days, especially on that night of the 15th of January, stirring the sleeping depths, and calling out momentary yearnings toward the higher life, had altogether ceased its pleadings. How could that mysterious whisper make itself heard in such a din and clangor of unholy music? There was no silent spot in her soul where it could enter and find a listener. But Mary did not think about it. She was inebriated with youth and joy, and had flung herself into the vortex, and raced round with it till her head reeled. On the surface, all was ripple and foam, rings running round and round; but the depths below were sleeping. The one, the visible hold that she retained on God at this time was her love for his poor.