In the two stories About My Aunt and The Largess of the Sea Maiden, I feel the endings couldn't have been more extreme opposite.  I think the text clearly leads me to believe the aunt and niece are happy in their own settled way.  I feel the man in the Maiden is very sad and unhappy.  He speaks of the necessary distraction he needs in his bedroom to have the television going just so the being awake in the bedroom does not allow him or his wife to acknowledge there maybe something else a husband and wife may do in that situation.