"Oh no."
"This makes my paragraph all wrong."
"Oh yes."
"It is really most unfortunate."
"Oh no."
Mrs. Verulam felt like a pendulum, and that she would go on helplessly alternating affirmatives and negatives for the next century or two. But Mr. Rodney, who, being of a very precise habit, was seriously upset by being given the lie direct—in tweed, too, on a London afternoon of May!—repeated "Oh no!" in accents of such indignant amazement that Mrs. Verulam was obliged to recover her equilibrium.
"Oh yes, I mean," she said. "Oh yes, yes, yes!"
This repetition signified the approach of hysteria. The young gentleman in the tweed suit rapidly intervened.
"My kind hostess's invitation lured me from my orange-groves," he said, in his deep contralto voice, fixing his large dark eyes with a hypnotic expression upon Mrs. Verulam.
"Oh," the Duchess said, "then you are staying with Mrs. Verulam?"