] ...I can't find the passage now that I want it, of course, but the book says something about Elizabeth Parker regularly sneaking down to see her lover after the rest of the household was in bed, and him riding the three hours home after that. (He really must have been in love - when did he get any sleep?)

I have reread it and you are right. Tumbles my pretty little theory rather nicely :o(

] As for Shackleton, on top of everything else, they had no children together, and especially, no son, which would definitely have counted against her as well!

Yes, indeed but your comment made me think of her sons from her happy first marriage: The eldest must have been around seventeen when the troubles started and over twenty when the marriage really got dangerously abusive. Why did they not protect her from such malice? They were three men against one! The authoress stressed the importance of family bonds but when not even sons cared for the safety of their mother there was not much reliance in family bonds anyway.

That is more or less the impression I get from Jane Austen's book, too. The relationship between parents and children, brother and sisters is often depicted as rather cool and calculated, more often than the other way around, though in a later chapter the auhtoress lays stress on the strong paternal bonds in a family. I have still strong doubts about that when I have to read accounts à là Shackleton!