The nurse was right. It certainly was not natural, and, if Mary had been so minded, she might have replied that it was not meant to be; it was supernatural. She contented herself, however, by deprecating the good soul's reproof and proposing to say the rosary, a proposal to which Malone invariably assented. So, waking up the larks with their matin prayer, the two would walk on briskly to church. Once set an Irish nurse to pray, and she'll keep pace with any saint in the calendar. Malone was not behind with the best. The devout old soul, never loath to begin, when once on her knees and fairly wound up in devotion, would go on for ever, and, when the two Masses were over and it was time to go, Mary had generally to break her off in the full tide of a litany that Malone went on muttering all the way out of church and sometimes finished on the road home. But if she was ready to help Mary in her praying feats, she highly disapproved of the fasting ones, as well as of the short rest that her young mistress imposed on herself. Mary confessed to me that sleep was at this period her greatest difficulty. She was by nature a great sleeper, and there was a time when early rising, even comparatively early, seemed to her the very climax of heroic mortification. By degrees she brought herself to rise at a given hour, which gradually, with the help of her angel guardian and a strong resolve, she advanced to five o'clock. During this time of probation, her father took her constantly into society, to archery meetings, and regattas, and concerts, and balls, as the season went on. Mary did her part bravely and cheerfully. Sometimes a panic seized her that her old spirit of worldliness was coming back--coming back with seven devils to take his citadel by storm and hold it more firmly than ever. But she had only to fix her eyes steadily on the faithful beacon of the Light-house out at sea, and bend her ear to the Life-bell chiming its _Sursum Corda_ far above the moaning of the waves and winds, and her foolish fears gave way. No one who saw her so bright and gracious, so gracefully pleased with everything and everybody, suspected the war that was agitating her spirit within. Her father wished her to take part in the dancing, otherwise he said her presence in the midst of it would be considered compulsory and her abstention be construed into censure or gloom. Mary acquiesced with regard to the square dances, but resolutely declined to waltz. Her father, satisfied with the concession, did not coerce her further.