It was such a relief to everybody to know that a girl was "settled," and especially it was such a relief to the girl herself.

Even novels and plays were no longer fairy-stories of entrancing young men and captivating young women who fell in love with each other in the first chapter, and after increasingly picturesque incidents were married in the last one in the absolute surety of being blissfully happy forevermore.

Neither Lady Agatha nor Emily had been brought up on this order of literature, nor in an atmosphere in which it was accepted without reservation.
They had both had hard lives, and knew what lay before them.

Agatha knew she must make a marriage or fade out of existence in prosaic and narrowed dulness.

Emily knew that there was no prospect for her of desirable marriage at all.