You are like so many intrusive oxen--absolutely! One of your men trod on my toe the other night, and what do you think the creature did?
Jerks back, then the half of him forward--I thought he was going to break in two--then grins, and grunts, "Oh! 'm sure, beg pardon, 'm sure!" I don't know whether he didn't say, MARM!' The Countess lifted her hands, and fell away in laughing horror.

When her humour, or her feelings generally, were a little excited, she spoke her vernacular as her sisters did, but immediately subsided into the deliberate delicately-syllabled drawl.
'Now that happened to me once at one of our great Balls,' she pursued.
'I had on one side of me the Duchesse Eugenia de Formosa de Fontandigua; on the other sat the Countess de Pel, a widow.

And we were talking of the ices that evening.

Eugenia, you must know, my dears, was in love with the Count Belmarana.

I was her sole confidante.