f58r

[Emma May Smith]

How can we be sure that the space wasn't left for a large and ornate star, which was wrongly inserted above the line by the illustrator?

I don't believe this is the best possibility, but should be considered.

We must remember that:
1) the stars themselves were inserted, so an illustrator did work on this page, and we would have to assert that two different stages of illustration were expected, one for stars and one for the capital; and
2) that the star can't have been drawn first, because a) it is indented with the text, so the illustrator must have know where the line of the text was to start, and b) it would have served adequately to mark the start of the paragraph, rendering the capital superfluous. (Note that f105r, which has a star and an 'ornate' initial does not have an indent.) Unless stars have a meaning beyond simply marking paragraphs.