[1] Dulcie Mainwaring, thirty two and recently jilted, works on ‘the dustier fringes of the academic world’, as a proofreader, indexer and occasional researcher.

She goes to look at the house where Aylwin’s wife Marjorie is living with her mother, Mrs Williton, and briefly meets both women.

Disappointingly, the man conducting the service is a locum: Neville has gone to stay with his mother, who runs a hotel in Taviscombe, Devon.

After one night at a different hotel they arrange to move to Eagle House, encountering Neville for the first time.

Laurel tells her aunt that Aylwin has proposed to her (naturally, she declined), and that Marjorie has met someone else, on the train back from Taviscombe.

Neville encourages Dulcie to take a flat in his parish – the one recently vacated by the woman who had fallen in love with him.

No Fond Return of Love was Pym's sixth novel, published by Jonathan Cape in 1961.

[2] The novel did not receive much critical notice, although it was reviewed positively in Tatler, where the reviewer wrote:[3] I love and admire Miss Pym's pussycat wit and profoundly unsoppy kindliness, and we may leave the deeply peculiar, face-saving, gently tormented English middle classes safely in her hands.Pym's working title was A Thankless Task, in reference to the life of an indexer and assistant researcher.

[4] Pym shared the same profession as Viola and Dulcie, having worked at the International African Institute in London since 1946.

Here, the characters of Wilmet and Rodney Forsyth, and Piers Longridge and his partner Keith, from A Glass of Blessings appear as tourists visiting the castle in Taviscombe.

Rhoda Wellcome, from Less than Angels, appears briefly, and we learn that her niece Deirdre and her husband Digby Fox are expecting a child.

When Viola moves into Dulcie's house, she notes that among the books in the bathroom is Some Tame Gazelle, Pym's first published novel.