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.
“Dearest,” she said, laying her hand caressingly upon his head, “I am so tired of Washington, where they say such silly things of me. Such a nonsensical article as there is in the paper this morning about the young and beautiful Mrs. Rossiter, whose sweet, fresh face and charming manners please every one, and whose dress is a marvel of taste and elegance. Why, they even estimated the value of my diamonds. I am sick of it all; it makes one so common; and then I know they would say the same of the next new-comer, if her dress was richer than mine. These reports are insufferable. Let’s go away—to-night; go to Florida for a week or two: it is not too late, and I don’t mind hot weather in the least. We shall be more quiet there, and I shall see more of you. Now, with the driving, and dressing, and calling, I scarcely have a bit of your company.”
She was in his lap by this time and her fingers were lifting deftly his scant hair and fixing it over his bald spot. Whatever Anna might lack she knew how to manage her husband, who, throwing down his paper and encircling her slender waist, said to her:
“Sick of it, are you, Pussy? Why, I thought you liked it immensely: women generally do; but it shows your good sense not to want to be stared at and written up by a lot of snipper-snappers. But for heaven’s sake don’t go to Florida! You will roast alive.”
The major had once been to St. Augustine in the days before the war, and it made him tired to think of the long, wearisome journey by land and the still worse trip by sea. But Anna’s heart was set upon Florida, and she carried her point and left Washington that night with her three trunks and maid, who had been found in New York, and on whom Mrs. Anna called for the most trivial service, even to the picking up of her handkerchief, which it would seem she sometimes dropped on purpose, for the sake of showing her authority. Anna was very proud of her position and proud of her name, so out of the common order of names. Lord Seymour Rossiter had a sound of nobility in it, and she persuaded her husband to leave off the Mr. when he registered at hotels, “just to try the effect,” she said. And so “Lord Seymour Rossiter, lady, and maid,” was the record in the book at the St. James, which the bridal pair reached one evening about nine o’clock.
Of course such a registry attracted attention and comment, and before ten o’clock half the people in the parlor heard that a real live lord and lady had arrived, and great was the interest in and the curiosity to see them.