You must come up and stay with me this winter, dear, instead of poking yourself away in this damp old house, where everybody seems to die of consumption.
Really it is a sort of family vault, and if you stop here long enough you will catch something too." Barbara thanked her with a sad little smile, and answered that she would think over her kind invitation and write to her later.

But in the end she never went to London, at least not to stay, perhaps it reminded her too vividly of her life there with Anthony.

At Eastwich she could bear such memories, but for some unexplained reason it was otherwise in London.
Indeed, in the course of time her aunt gave up the attempt to persuade her, and devoted herself to forwarding the fortunes of her other pretty nieces, Barbara's sisters, two of whom, it should be said, already she had settled comfortably in life.

Also she took a fancy to the boy, in whose rough, energetic nature she found something akin to her own.
"I am sick of women," she said; "it is a comfort to have to do with a male thing." So it came about that after he went to school young Anthony spent a large share of his holidays at his great-aunt's London house.

It may be added that he got no good from these visits, since Lady Thompson spoilt him and let him have his way in everything.