Anna was growing very fast, and talked of her relations, the Rossiters, and the Hethertons, and enjoyed herself immensely in her handsome suite of rooms at the Riggs House, where she would have spent a longer time, but for a letter received from Grandma Ferguson, which threw her into a wild state of alarm and apprehension. The good old lady had long wished to visit Washington and see the _doin’s_, she wrote, and “she couldn’t have a better time than when Anna was there to go round with her and show her the _elephant_. So, she’d about made up her mind to pick up and start, as her clothes were all nice and new, and Anna might expect her any day, and had better engage a room at once. A small one on the top floor would answer, as she did not mean to spend all her money on rooms, and she could just as well take some of her meals at a restaurant as not!” “Oh-h!” and Anna fairly gasped as she read this letter, which she found lying by her plate one morning, when she came down to breakfast alone after a brilliant party, of which she had been the belle. “Oh-h!” and the cold sweat oozed from every pore as she thought of her grandmother swooping down upon her, and with her brown silk, and purple gloves, and pink ribbons, and dreadful grammar, demolishing the fair structure of blood, and family, and position, which she had secured for herself. Knowing her grandmother as she did, she felt certain that she would come, if some decisive step were not taken to prevent it. And Anna took the decisive step, and turning her back upon the fresh fields of glory she had meant to win in Washington, she telegraphed immediately to her grandmother that she should leave the city that day, but said nothing of her destination. “She would not mind following me to Europe, if she knew I was going there—the vulgar old thing!” she thought, with an indignant toss of fine-ladyism. “I will not have her spoiling everything. I am done with the old, hateful life. I am Mrs. Lord Seymour Rossiter and mistress of my own actions.” So she sent the telegram and then sought her husband, who had breakfasted before her and was reading his paper in his room.