Lady B.—“They are mine, too, to a certain extent, but I fear that....”
La Comtesse.—“I fear, ma belle, that your husband respects you a little too much. I don’t dislike the Count’s making me ... blush ... sometimes.”
Lady B.—“Oh! Lord B. would never do that.... It is I that have made him blush several times.”
La Comtesse.—“Yes? You are charming. Tell me all about it!”
Lady B.—“That would be very hard.”
La Comtesse.—“Do send me your husband’s photograph. I should so like to have in my album the portrait of an English lord who blushes when his wife shocks him.”
Lady B.—“By the bye, you have not told me what a cabinet particulier is like.”
La Comtesse.—“Oh! they are nothing very wonderful: little rooms coquettishly furnished ... all the pleasure is in the novelty, the strangeness of the thing; ... it is droll to disguise oneself as ... the mistress of one’s own husband.”
Lady B.—“Oh! do tell me more about it.”
La Comtesse.—“You want me to shock you, then?”