Whilst her father lived, Anne had been the source of comfort and relief in the few stolen minutes of any day when Lady Catherine happened to be busy elsewhere. Then, they would share misery, blame, obloquy, and dejection, one with the derision of a disappointed choice, and the other with the censure of a disappointed child. Lady Catherine was not sufficiently well-pleased with either to interrupt these tête-à-têtes of father and daughter, who were consequentially and agreeably left in peace, excepting at meal-times, or when Lady Catherine felt obliged to demonstrate the existence of her husband or daughter in accepting a general invitation, or when Lady Catherine had nothing else to do or no-one else to disturb.

Upon Sir Lewis’s early and unexpected death, Lady Catherine, a woman unhampered by deep feelings, was able to continue in her daily occupations of improving Rosings, settling regular disputes amongst her tenantry, harrying her servants, and bullying her daughter without interruption. Never happier than when surrounded by a society that reflected the imagined status of her drawing-room, she cultivated a coterie of dependents, the Reverend Collins amongst them, and diligently offered alternately useless advice and unstudied insults to anyone so unfortunate as not to be Lady Catherine of Rosings, or possibly Anne. These scenes of domestic harmony and its extension throughout the neighbourhood of Hunsford continued throughout Anne’s transition into womanhood. Only once had the congenial consistency of her days been threatened, occasioned by the marriage of her cousin, Mr. Darcy, to Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Lady Anne had been long-deceased by this time, but her interest—at least as represented by her sister—exactly coincided with the views of Lady Catherine: Mr. Darcy should marry his cousin, Anne. Lady Catherine had been so little satisfied by her nephew’s following his own inclinations in the matter that, for many weeks, Anne’s daily portion of misery was augmented by her mother’s abuse of her cousin, and of herself for the dereliction of her duty to her mother and the entire Fitzwilliam family in failing to secure the affections of her cousin so as to pre-empt his choosing elsewhere.