On instinct, Cassandra crossed the carpet, stepped forward, took the young hands in her own and pecked the pink, downy cheek. ‘My dear, I cannot tell you with what eagerness I have been awaiting your arrival.’ She was all too aware that she was starting to gabble, but sensed that the situation demanded it. ‘There are so many blessings to my situation, living as I do in the dear cottage up there, on the corner.’ Idle chatter was, in her view, the very best sort of weapon in the face of great awkwardness. ‘There are windows on both sides – I do not know if you have ever noticed that charming feature? – thus putting me in a position of enormous advantage. I am always the first to know who comes into the village and I was determined to be the first to call upon you.’

She finished with a flash of the social smile of the everyday morning visitor; she received a disarming, level and serious gaze. In the silence which accompanied it, Cassandra studied her hostess.

The last time she had laid eyes upon Mary Dorothea Knatchbull, which was not so long ago, she had been a sweet, pretty girl of quite obvious innocence who seemed ever eager to please. So that when the shock news of the elopement first reached her, Cassandra had struggled to believe it to be true.

The creature before her now was quite different: much closer to being a woman and, of course, at the peak of her beauty. A lilac silk gown, cut low at the bosom, showed off her figure: that tiny waist was close to unnatural; rich, chestnut curls were piled high on her head; the chiselled little chin – said to come from her mother – was sharp as a bevel on a fine diamond. So her attractions were manifest. But though her clear, hazel eyes had not lost their shine, grey shadows had moved in beneath them. And while she blushed in the manner befitting a newlywed, her still lovely countenance was pinched in with pain.

This was no gay, light-hearted bride, then; more one riven with contradiction and conflict, and, it was clear, in no sort of mood to join in her visitor’s mindless prattle. Instead, Mary responded with frankness. ‘Miss Austen, you are most kind to call when, as I understand it, many condemn me. This is an honour which I, a pariah, had not dared to expect.’ She then shied like a miscreant under threat of a whipping. ‘Unless you are come to express your great disapproval …’

Surely the girl had never known any mistreatment? In her surprise, Cassandra did raise a brow then – that could not be helped; it had seemingly lifted entirely of its own accord – before responding to the question in appropriate terms: meet like with like, as was her way. ‘May I?’ She signalled the sofa – a deep, red damask, worn with the neglect of long generations. It could do with replacing.