"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small." LONGFELLOW. The doctor was sitting with Colonel Tempest on Di's return to the hotel, and Di perceived that her father, who was still in a very excited state, had been telling him about his sudden change of fortune. The doctor courteously offered his congratulations, and on leaving made a pretext of inquiring after Di's health in order to see her alone. "Colonel Tempest has been telling me of his unexpected access of wealth," he said. "In his present condition of nervous prostration, and tendency to cerebral excitement, the information should most certainly have been withheld from him. His brain is not in a state to bear the strain which such an event might have put upon it, has put upon it. Were such a thing to occur again in his enfeebled condition, I cannot answer for the consequences." "It was absolutely unforeseen," said Di. "None of us had the remotest suspicion. He has been in the habit of reading his letters for the past month." "They must be kept from him for the present," replied the doctor. "Let them be brought to you in future, and use your own discretion about showing them to him after you have read them yourself. Your father must be guarded from all agitation." This was more easily said than done. Nothing could turn Colonel Tempest's shattered, restless mind from hopping like a grasshopper on that one subject for the remainder of the day. The bit of cork in his medicine, which at another time would have elicited a torrent of indignation, excited only a momentary attention. He talked without ceasing--hinted darkly at danger to John which that young man's creditable though tardy action had averted, alluded to passages in his own life which nothing would induce him to divulge, and then lighting on a sentimental vein, discoursed of a happy old age (the old age of fiction), in which he should see Archie's and Di's children playing in the gallery at Overleigh. And the old name---- Di had not realized, until her parent descanted upon the subject in a way that set her teeth on edge, how hideous, how vulgar, is the seamy side of pride of birth. When Colonel Tempest began to dwell on "the goodness and the grace that on his birth had smiled," shall we blame Di if she put on the clock half an hour, and rang for the nurse? Things were not much better next morning. Di gave strict orders that all letters and telegrams should be brought to her room. Colonel Tempest fidgeted because he had not heard from the lawyer in whose hands John had placed the transfer of the property. The letter was in Di's pocket, but she dared not give it to him, for though it contained nothing to agitate him, she knew that the fact that she had opened it would raise a whirlwind.