Thanks Bookbox, I think you're probably right. The word does appear to begin with a lower-case 'a' (complete with flourish as per the example earlier in the line, as you point out, and just to confuse the obvious comparison with the capitalized Anne in the line below) and I can't really see any other alternatives. I toyed with 'Aisme' as a variant of 'Aimée' but it's a name that didn't really come into popular use until later.
Much appreciated - I've been staring at that for a couple of days!