Days spent in London soon devolved into a wearying sameness that could test, but not surmount, the resolve of both: Lady Catherine intent upon directing Anne through the labyrinth of intrigues and deceptions necessary to secure an advantageous match, and her daughter’s determination to the contrary. Neither was popular with their acquaintance, so after breakfast at ten o’clock, their mornings were usually spent in the stupidity of dressing or other frivolous employment, and afternoons abroad, if they happened to secure an invitation to tea. Shopping was always an available diversion, but as Lady Catherine enjoyed it not and, as her daughter’s apathy extended universally, the merchants of Mayfair were poorer than otherwise might be expected through their want of custom from that quarter. Fine afternoons might be taken up with excursions to Ladies’ Mile and occasional promenades around Mayfair in order to exhibit Anne’s cloathing, which otherwise would have travelled no farther than her wardrobe. Anne could never be prevailed upon to drive herself, drawing the admiration of those gentlemen who rejoice in such accomplishments on the part of ladies, much less to trouble herself to return later in the afternoon for a repetition of the performance. Sometimes of a Wednesday or a Saturday, Lady Catherine and her daughter might attend the Parliamentary sessions, but these efforts were of limited value, as they only rarely produced the desired invitation to dinner. Anne might occasionally attend the Royal Academy, having no design to study the pictures, but rather to annoy Lady Catherine with her choice, and to be secure against her company. Most days, Miss de Bourgh elected to pass her unsubscribed hours at Hookham’s circulating library in Bond Street. To that place she would come and go in an open carriage whenever the weather was fine, assuring her mother that she was promoting display from without, yet secure against any interposition sufficient for the examination of the intangibles within. In that borrowed sanctuary, she would pass her time reading novels, safe from her mother and society at-large, and relieved of the tedious imposition of pleasing either.