He made himself look again at the stage. They were playing the second scene of Act Three. Clarissa, dressed in a voluminous, lace-trimmed dressing-gown was seated at her looking-glass with Cariola in attendance, hairbrush in hand. The dressing-table, like all the props, was authentic, borrowed, he supposed, from the castle. There was more than one advantage in staging the play in the eighteen nineties. The scene was being played with the accompaniment of a musical-box which had been placed on the dressing-table and which tinkled out a medley of Scottish airs. That too was probably another of Ambrose's pieces of Victoriana, but he suspected that the idea was Clarissa's. The scene began well enough. He had forgotten how Clarissa could take on an almost luminous beauty, the power of that high, slightly cracked voice, the grace with which she used her arms and body. She wasn't a Suzman or a Mirren, but she did manage to convey something of the high erotic excitement, the vulnerability and the rashness of a woman deeply in love. That wasn't surprising; it was a part she had played often enough in real life. But to produce such conviction with a leading man who obviously saw Antonio as an English country gentleman sinning above his station was something of an achievement. But Cariola was a disaster, nervous and skittish, tripping across the stage in her goffered cap like a soubrette in a French farce. When she had stumbled for the third time over her lines De Ville called out impatiently:

'You've only to remember three lines, God help you. And cut out the coyness. You're not playing No, No, Nanette. All right. Take it from the beginning of the scene.' Clarissa protested:

'But it needs pace, lightness. I lose the impetus if I have to keep going back.' He reiterated:

'Take it from the beginning.'

She hesitated, shrugged, then sat silent. The cast glanced at each other furtively, shuffled, waited. Ivo's interest suddenly rekindled. He thought:

'She's losing her temper. With her, that's halfway to losing her nerve.'

Suddenly she took the music-box and slammed down the lid. The crack was as sharp as a gunshot. The tinkling little tune stopped. It was followed by absolute silence as the cast seemed to hold their breath. Then Clarissa came forward to the footlights:

'That bloody box is getting on my nerves. If we have to have background music in this scene, then surely Ambrose can find something more suitable than those damn Scottish tunes. They're driving me mad, so God knows what they'll do to the audience.'

Ambrose called quietly from the back of the auditorium. Ivo was surprised to hear him and wondered how long he had been silently sitting there.

'It was your idea, as I remember.'

'I wanted a musical-box but not a bloody Scottish medley. And do we have to have an audience? Cordelia, can't you find something useful to do? God knows, we're paying you enough. Tolly could do with some help ironing the costumes, unless you propose to sit on your ass all afternoon.'

The girl got to her feet. Even in the half-light, Ivo could detect the flush rising on her throat, could see her mouth half open in protest, then close resolutely. Despite those candid almost judgemental eyes, the disconcerting honesty, the impression of controlled competence, she was at heart a sensitive child. Anger rose in him, satisfyingly strong and uncomplicated. He rejoiced that he could feel it. With difficulty, he pulled himself erect. He was aware that all eyes had turned towards him. He said calmly:

'Miss Gray and I will take a walk. The performance hasn't been exactly riveting so far and the air outside will be fresher.'

When they were outside, their going silently watched by the cast, she said:

'Thank you, Mr Knightley.'

He smiled. Suddenly he felt well, extraordinarily well, his whole body mysteriously lighter.

'I'm afraid I'd make a poor dancer in my present state, and if I had to cast you as any character in Emma it certainly wouldn't be poor Harriet. You must excuse Clarissa. When she's nervous, she's apt to become rude.'

'That may be her misfortune but I don't find it particularly excusable.'

He added:

'And public rudeness provokes in me the kind of childish retort which is only satisfying for the second after it's spoken. She'll apologize very prettily when she next sees you alone.'

'I'm sure she will.'

Suddenly she turned to him and smiled:

'Actually I should like a walk if you won't find it too exhausting.'

She was, he thought, the only person on the island who could say that to him without making him feel either irritated or embarrassed. He said:

'What about the beach?'

'I'd like that.'

'It'll be slow going, I'm afraid.' 'That doesn't matter.'

How very sweet she was, with that gentle, self-contained dignity. He smiled and held out his hand to her.

'"Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, the Gods themselves throw incense." Well, shall we go?'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

They trudged slowly side by side along the very edge of the tide where the firmer sand made the going easiest. The beach was narrow, cut by rotting breakwaters and bounded by a low stone wall beyond which rose the tree-covered, friable cliffs. Much of the bank must once have been planted. Between the beeches and the oaks were clumps of laurel, old rose bushes twined among the thicker foliage of rhododendrons, woody geraniums distorted by the wind, hydrangeas in their autumn shades of bronze, lime-yellow and purple, so much more subtle and interesting, thought Cordelia, than the gaudy heads of high summer. She felt at peace with her companion and wished for a moment that she could confide in him, that her job needn't impose such a weight of deception. For ten minutes they walked in undemanding silence. Then he said:

'This may be a stupid question. Gray isn't an uncommon name. But you're not by any chance related to Redvers Gray?'

'He was my father.'

'There's something about the eyes. I only met him once, but his was a face one didn't forget. He had a great influence on my generation at Cambridge. He had the gift of making rhetoric sound sincere. Now that the rhetoric and the dream are not only discredited, which is discouraging, but unfashionable, which is fatal, I suppose he is almost forgotten. But I should like to have known him.'

Cordelia said:

'So should I.'

He glanced down at her.

'It was like that, was it? The revolutionary idealist dedicated to mankind in the abstract but not much good at caring for his own child. Not that I can criticize. I haven't done too well with mine. Children need you to talk to them, play with them, give time to them when they're young. If you can't be bothered it isn't surprising if, when they're adolescents, you find that you don't much like each other. But then, by the time mine were adolescents I didn't much like their mother either.'

Cordelia said:

'I think I could have liked him if we'd had time. I did spend six months with him and the comrades in Germany and Italy. But then he died.'

'You make death sound like a betrayal. And so, of course, it is.'

Cordelia thought of those six months. Half a year of cooking for the comrades, shopping for the comrades, carrying messages, sometimes not without danger, finding rooms, propitiating landladies and shopkeepers, sewing for the comrades. They and her father believed implicitly in equality for women without troubling to acquire the basic domestic skills which would have made that equality possible. And it was for that precarious nomadic existence that he had taken her from the Convent, made it impossible for her to take up her place at Cambridge. She no longer felt any particular resentment. That period of her life was passed, finished. And she hoped that they had given something to each other, if only trust. She had early dropped Redvers from her name telling herself that it was an unnecessary piece of cabin luggage. She had been reading Browning at the time. Now she wondered if it had been a more significant rejection even a small revenge. The thought was unwelcome and she thrust it away. She heard him say: