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by her mother's strident voice, and confused by all this attention, Sophia hung her head: with a self-possession that she neither felt nor seemed to feel she said, 'Was this the piece you was playing, sir? Mr Tindall has made me practise it over and over again.'
    She moved away from the piano, carrying the sheets, and at this point the drawing-room was filled with activity. Mrs Williams protested that she would neither sit down nor take any refreshment whatsoever; Preserved Killick and John Witsoever, able seamen, brought in tables, trays, urns, more coal; Frances whispered 'What ho, for ship's biscuit and a swig of rum,' to make Cecilia giggle; and Jack slowly began shepherding Mrs Williams and Stephen out of the room through the french windows in the direction of what he took to be the jasmin.
    The true jasmin, however, proved to be on the library wall; and so it was from outside the library windows that Jack and Stephen heard the familiar notes of the adagio, as silvery and remote as a musical-box. It was absurd how the playing resembled the painting: light, ethereal, tenuous. Stephen Maturin winced at the flat A and the shrill C; and at the beginning of the first variation he glanced uneasily at Jack to see whether he too was jarred by the mistaken phrasing. But Jack seemed wholly taken up with Mrs Williams's account of the planting of the shrub, a minute and circumstantial history.
    Now there was another hand on the keyboard. The adagio came out over the sparse wintery lawn with a fine ringing tone, inaccurate, but strong and free; there was harshness in the tragic first variation - a real understanding of what it meant.
    'How well dear Sophia plays,' said Mrs Williams, leaning her head to one side. 'Such a sweetly pretty tune, too.'
    'Surely that is not Miss Williams, ma'am?' cried Stephen.
    'Indeed it is, sir,' cried Mrs Williams. 'Neither of her sisters can go beyond the scales, and I know for a fact that Mrs Villiers cannot read a note. She would not apply herself to the drudgery.' And as they walked back to the house through the mud Mrs Williams told them what they should know about drudgery, taste, and application.
    Mrs Villiers started up from the piano, but not so quickly as to escape Mrs Williams's indignant eye - an eye so indignant that it did not lose its expression for the rest of the visit. It even outlasted Jack's announcement of a ball in commemoration of the Battle of Saint Vincent, and the gratification of being the first guests to be bespoke.
    'You recall Sir John Jervis's action, ma'am, off Cape Saint Vincent? The fourteenth of February, ninety-seven. Saint Valentine's day.'
    'Certainly I do, sir: but' - with an affected simper -'of course my girls are too young to remember anything about it. Pray, did we win?'
    'Of course we did, Mama,' hissed the girls.
    'Of course we did,' said Mrs Williams. 'Pray sir, was you there - was you present?'
    'Yes, ma'am,' said Jack. 'I was third of the Orion. And so I always like to celebrate the anniversary of the battle with all the friends and shipmates I can bring together. And seeing there is a ballroom here -,
    'You may depend upon it, my dears,' said Mrs Williams, on the way home, 'that this ball is being given in compliment to us - to me and my daughters - and I have no doubt that Sophie will open it with Captain Aubrey. Saint Valentine's day, la! Frankie, you have dribbled chocolate all down your front; and if you eat so many rich pastries you will come out in spots, and then where will you be? No man will look at you. There must have been a dozen eggs and half a pound of butter in that smaller cake: I have never been so surprised in my life.'
    Diana Villiers had been taken, after some hesitation, partly because it would have been indecent to leave her behind and partly because Mrs Williams thought there was no possible comparison between a woman with ten thousand pounds and one without ten thousand pounds; but further consideration, the pondering of certain