] ...and came to the conclusion that women only sought help when abused to the extreme. It seems that this Lady Austen only fled after her life was at stake.

Well,actually the abuse ( which was life endangering one moer than one occasion) did take place over a number of years.Stones book gives a graaphi( tooo graphic for hee account).She did not flee on many occasins when she was serioulsy injured.I thini if you care to look at eh hsitory of beaten wives,they tend to endure suffering over a long period of tiem before soemthing, or some incident finally breaks th cmale back.

] . How the son could left his sick and injured mother in the care of that man is totally beyond me, but that's how it was. To his credit I must say, perhaps he did offer his mother to take her in and she refused out of false pride or in the vain hope that now that his son had intervened her husband would have behaved himself. This is all idle speculation on my part, though.

As I said in my header, I wonder just how often they did meet?

She was a very proud woman, I agree Kirstin.I am under that impression too.So perhaps she was very skilled at hiding the effects of the abuse.?I don't think it is fair to blame her sons for not acting to help.We don't know enough of all the sides of the story to say clearly one way or the other, IMHO.