‘So this is where you are hiding!’ she said crossly. Cassy had been cross since the moment she arrived. ‘I know you’re avoiding me. Pray, do not argue!’ She held up one delicate hand while lowering herself, prettily, on to the chair. ‘Poor darlings – if only you could see your own faces! Honestly, it is the same wherever I go. The company droops when I heave into view. It is utterly humiliating.’ A dish of tea was placed on the table beside her, but she ignored it. ‘I was the gay young thing once, if you remember?’ Cassy twisted her fingers and stared into her lap. ‘All of a sudden, I am twenty-seven years of age, and the Family Problem.’

‘You are hardly a problem, my dear,’ her aunt replied smoothly. ‘Shall we work while we chat?’ Conversation flowed so much more easily when conjoined with mutual manual endeavour. Miss Austen rose and collected the poor basket.

But Cassy refused. ‘Thank you, but I find my own perpetual misery occupation enough.’

‘Misery, my dear?’ Her aunt gathered her patience and began yet another new hem. ‘Whoever suffered the melancholies when newly engaged?’

‘Ah. Cleverly done, Aunt!’ Cassy said, with great bitterness. ‘At last, we are on to the Great Subject. Pray, do continue! Delight me with your sermon. I have heard all the others.’

‘I shall do nothing of the sort!’ Miss Austen replied calmly, and ignored Mary’s meaningful looks. ‘You are perfectly old enough to make up your own mind. Who am I to judge you, my dear?’

Cassy, flummoxed, dropped her belligerence.

But Mary, it seemed, had spied an opportunity. ‘Then perhaps, instead, you might tell us what your sister would say, had God chosen to spare her and she were here?’

‘Jane, too, was unmarried,’ Cassandra retorted.

‘Yet not short on advice or opinion …’ Cassy smiled with the memory.

‘That much is true.’ The aunt chuckled, and a new harmony reigned in the room. ‘Now, let me think …’ She had already finished one hem and was selecting another. ‘I remember when Fanny was wrestling with a decision herself, in her much younger days.’

‘Ooh!’ The two women squealed like young girls. ‘Who was he? Do tell!’

‘I fear the name is quite lost to me. All I can say is that she, too, asked for Jane’s guidance and my sister and I worked on the letter together.’ She stopped stitching to gaze out of the window, with the hint of a smile, remembering how very convivial their dear cottage was once. ‘There were two salient points to it, as I recall. The first being: never to marry where there is not yet affection …’

‘Which Fanny then did, may I point out?’ Cassy responded. ‘And I do not believe that she harbours any regret …’

‘Affection can grow over time, it is true.’ The hemming continued. ‘Though one cannot count on it.