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"O thou child of many prayers!

Life hath quicksands, life hath snares!"

—Longfellow.

A bright ray of sunshine stealing in between the silken curtains fell athwart Mildred's eyes and awoke her.

The fire was blazing cheerily on the hearth, Rachel was at hand to wait upon her, and she found it by no means unpleasant to sit still and have her hair skilfully arranged for her instead of doing the work with her own hands, as she had been accustomed to do since she was quite a little girl.

She occupied herself the while in reading aloud from the Bible, according to promise, and Rachel seemed well pleased to listen.

Her toilet completed, Mildred went to the library to answer her letter, while waiting for the breakfast bell, and there Mr. Dinsmore found her.

"That is quite right," he said. "Send my love to them all. But don't close your letter yet, you'll want to tell your mother about your ride. We'll take one that used to be a favorite with her."

Mildred looked up brightly. "I shall enjoy it all the more for knowing that."

"You are accustomed to riding on horseback?" he said inquiringly.

"Enough to be able to keep my seat on a well behaved steed," she answered laughingly. "I hope to improve very much under your tuition, Uncle Dinsmore."

"Gyp, the pony I have assigned to you while you stay, is quite safe, I think; sufficiently spirited but well trained," he said, giving her his arm to conduct her into the breakfast room, for the bell had rung.

"I hear you are going to ride, Mildred," Mrs. Dinsmore remarked as they rose from the table. "Have you a riding habit?"

Mildred was very glad to be able to reply in the affirmative.

The horses were already at the door.

She hurried to her room and was down again in a few minutes arrayed in a manner that entirely satisfied Mrs. Dinsmore.

It was a delicious morning, riders and steeds seemed alike in fine spirits, and Mildred had seldom found anything more enjoyable than the brisk canter of the next hour over a good road and through new and pleasing scenes.

On their return Mrs. Dinsmore followed her to her room.

"You must have some of your dresses made at once, Mildred," she said. "Can you get out the materials and come now to the sewing-room to be fitted? The black silk should be first, I think, and finished this week, that you may have it to wear to church next Sunday."

"You are very kind, aunt," Mildred said, looking much pleased; "but are not the services of your seamstresses needed just now for yourself and the children?"

"No; there is nothing hurrying," was the reply; "we all had fall dresses made up in Philadelphia, and you must be prepared to show yourself to visitors; for our friends and neighbors will soon be calling on you, as well as on us; of course I shall take pride in having them find my husband's niece suitably attired."

Mildred was nothing loath to accept the offer; in fact was filled with an eager desire, natural to her age, to see how all these beautiful things would look when made up, and how well they would become her.

But her love of independence and the industrious habits in which she had been trained, alike forbade her to leave all the work to Mrs. Dinsmore's maids; her own deft and busy fingers accomplished no small share of it; the greater part of every day for the next two or three weeks being occupied in that way.

Mrs. Dinsmore disliked exertion of any kind and seldom took a needle in her hand, but she had no distaste toward seeing others employed, and generally spent her mornings lounging in the sewing-room, ready to give her opinion in regard to styles of trimming, and so forth, and enjoying a comfortable sense of conferring a great favor thereby.

The black silk was completed in time to be worn on Mildred's first Sunday at Roselands, and Mrs. Dinsmore, subjecting her to a careful scrutiny when she came down ready dressed for church, assured her that she was quite a stylish looking young lady, whom she herself was not ashamed to exhibit to her acquaintance as belonging to the Dinsmore family.

A glance into a pier glass in the drawing-room told Mildred the compliment was not undeserved, and I fear there was no little gratified vanity in the smile with which she turned away and followed her aunt to the carriage waiting for them at the door, and that the consciousness of her finery and its becomingness seriously interfered with the heartiness of her devotions in the house of God, and the attention she should have given to the preaching of the Word, and services of prayer and praise.

She was in some measure aware of this herself, and felt condemned on account of it; but was not helped to recover lost ground by the worldly conversation carried on about her during the greater part of the day.

There was a good deal of friendly chat in the vestibule of the church, after the close of the services, neighbors and acquaintances gathering about the Dinsmores to welcome and congratulate them on their return from their late trip, and inquire concerning their health and enjoyment of their lengthened sojourn in the North.

Mr. Dinsmore was extremely hospitable and fond of entertaining his friends, nor had he any scruples about doing so on the Sabbath; and at his urgent invitation two gentlemen and a very gayly dressed and lively young lady accompanied his family and himself to Roselands to dine and spend the remainder of the day.

The talk was just what it might have been on any other occasion; of politics, amusements, dress, anything and everything but the topics suited to the sacredness of the day; and Mildred, while yielding to the temptation to join in it, felt painfully conscious that in so doing she was not obeying the command, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy."

It was late in the evening when the visitors left, and she retired to her room weary and sleepy, hurried through the form of devotion, giving but little heart to it, and was soon in bed and asleep.

She tried to do better the next morning, but her thoughts ran very much on dress and the vanities of earth.

"How could she help that?" she asked herself, half despairingly, half in excuse, "she must assist in making her clothes, and decide, too, how it should be done."

Another dress was begun that day, and head and hands were fully occupied over it.

Her uncle insisted on a ride or walk every day, callers began to come, hours had to be spent in the drawing-room, and work on the new dresses to be pushed all the harder the rest of the day to recover lost time.

Then she must attire herself in her most becoming finery, and drive out with Mrs. Dinsmore to return her calls, during which the talk generally ran upon the merest trifles, furnishing no food for mind or heart.

Flatteries and compliments were showered upon our heroine, for she was pretty, graceful and refined, quick at repartee, self-possessed, without being conceited, well informed for her years, and a good conversationalist.

Her aunt and uncle were altogether satisfied with the impression she made; but her parents would have been sorely troubled could they have known how the world and its vanities were engrossing the thoughts of their beloved child, to the exclusion of better things.

There were brilliant entertainments given in her honor; first, by Mrs. Dinsmore, afterward by others who had been her invited guests.

The weather continuing remarkably mild and pleasant for some weeks, there were excursions gotten up to various points of interest in the vicinity; there were dinner parties and tea drinkings; days when the house was filled with gay company from morning to night, or when Mr. and Mrs. Dinsmore visited in like manner at the houses of neighboring planters, taking Mildred with them.

Then there were drives to the city: in the daytime to shop for more finery, in the evening for the purpose of attending some place of amusement,—now a concert, now a lecture, and at length the opera and the theatre.

Into these latter and questionable, not to say forbidden, places of resort, to one reared as Mildred had been, she was at first decoyed; but becoming intoxicated with their sensual sweets, she went again and again of her own free will.

Thus for a month or more she ran a giddy round of worldly pleasures, scarcely taking time to think, and refusing to listen to the warnings and upbraidings of conscience.

But her gayeties began to tell unfavorably upon her health, the recovery of which had been her principal object in leaving home, and she was obliged to relinquish them in part.

Then a long storm set in, confining her to the house for a week, and keeping away visitors. She was forced to stop and consider, and a long, loving letter from her mother coming just then, freighted with words of Christian counsel, had a blessed effect in helping to open her eyes to her guilt and danger.

In the silence and solitude of her room, the sighing of the wind without, and the rain and sleet beating against the windows, the only sounds that reached her ear, Mildred read and wept over this letter, and over the mental review of the life she had been leading since coming to Roselands.

To a mere worldling it might have seemed innocent enough, but not so to Mildred's enlightened conscience; a butterfly existence was not the end for which she had been created; yet she could not shut her eyes to the fact that that was the best that could be said of her life of late; she had been neither doing nor getting any good, but rather the contrary—injuring her health by her dissipations, setting an example of worldliness, and falling behind in the Christian race.

She had not neglected the forms of religious service,—had attended church every Sunday, read her Bible, and repeated a prayer night and morning; but all, as she now saw with grief and shame, with a sadly wandering heart, thoughts full of dress and earthly vanities.

Alas! how far she had wandered out of the way in which she had covenanted to walk! and that though she had proved in days past, that "Wisdom's ways were ways of pleasantness, and all her paths were peace."

And as she questioned with herself whether she had found real enjoyment in these by-paths of worldliness and sin, she was forced to acknowledge that in spite of much thoughtless gayety and mirth, there had been no genuine, solid happiness, but instead a secret uneasiness which she vainly strove to banish, and could only forget for a time in the giddy round of amusement.

Should she go on as she had begun? No: by the help of God she would turn and find again the path she had left; even as her mother in this timely letter advised and entreated.

Mrs. Keith knew to some extent, the worldly atmosphere of the house into which her young daughter had gone, and she had written with the fear in her heart that Mildred might succumb to its temptations even as she had done.

She entreated her to be on her guard, watching unto prayer and thus keeping close to the Master.

"And, dear daughter," she added, "should you ever find that you have wandered, lose not a moment in returning to him and pleading for cleansing, for pardon, and restoration to his favor through his own precious blood. Let not Satan tempt you to stay away one moment with the lie that the Lord is not ever waiting to be gracious and ever ready and willing to forgive; or that he would have you delay till your repentance is deeper or you have done something to atone in some measure for your sin.

"God's time is always now; to the back-slider in heart or life, as well as to the impenitent sinner; and to both he says: 'Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out!'"