When Sir Lewis was alive, his journey to town was undertaken immediately with the opening of Parliament, a practise which accorded with his own pleasure in visiting his former associates, and watching for any indication that an unfavourable bill might elude his vigilance and become law against his interests; his ladies would arrive after Easter with the fashionable set. When Anne was younger, her father often took her to the balcony in the House and interpreted the action on the floor below them for the benefit of her education, ensuring that she would have her opinions correctly formed as to party and issue; Lady Catherine did not chuse to accompany her husband and daughter, as attendance did not enhance her own personal prestige to be seen amongst the others in the gallery, and she had no intention of obliging her husband by feigning an interest in a subject not immediately before her own ideas of advancement.

Following the death of Sir Lewis, the de Bourgh ladies were in London before Christmas in the transparent misfortune of having nowhere else to go, excepting the dullness of a country house in the winter without either sport or sportsmen. They arrived to a London deserted by those having winter engagements, and no plans to return any earlier than the following spring. Lady Catherine and her daughter had spent several seasons in London without attaching a suitable object, despite the former’s assiduous efforts in the form of schemes and entertainments. Anne had now reached her majority, and, at one-and-twenty, remained as unlikely as ever to secure an husband, despite a tolerable person and an extremely attractive fortune. In this endeavour, Anne had to balance the competing claims of satisfaction derived through impeding all of her mother’s plans for removing her from Rosings, against the penance of continuing there as Lady Catherine’s daughter. At present, Anne had met with no dependable replacement for Mr. Darcy’s fortune and situation; and so she remained with her mother as the best-known of ills.