Sir William (interrupting):  “Never mind what I should say!  What did you say?”

“Margy” (evasively):  “The thing is unthinkable!  Good girls like yours could never go against their parents’ wishes!  Men who can’t keep their wives should not marry at all. ...”

Sir William (with great violence, seizing my hands):  “What did you say?”

“Margy” (with a sweet smile):  “I’m afraid, Sir William, you are changing your mind and, instead of leaning on my advice, you begin to suspect it.”

Sir William (very loud and beside himself with rage):  “What did you say?”

“Margy” (coolly, putting her hand on his):  “I can’t think why you are so excited!  If I told you that I had said, ’Give it all up, my dear, and don’t vex your aged father,’ what would you say?”

Sir William (getting up and flinging my hand away from him):  “Hoots!  You’re a liar!”

“Margy”:  “No, I’m not, Sir William; but, when I see people listening at doors, I give them a run for their money.”

I had another vicarious proposal.  One night, dining with the Bischoffheims, I was introduced for the first time to Baron Hirsch, an Austrian who lived in Paris.  He took me in to dinner and a young man whom I had met out hunting sat on the other side of me.

I was listening impressively to the latter, holding my champagne in my hand, when the footman in serving one of the dishes bumped my glass against my chest and all its contents went down the front of my ball-dress.  I felt iced to the bone; but, as I was thin, I prayed profoundly that my pink bodice would escape being marked.  I continued in the same position, holding my empty glass in my hand as if nothing had happened, hoping that no one had observed me and trying to appear interested in the young man’s description of the awful dangers he had run when finding himself alone with hounds.

A few minutes later Baron Hirsch turned to me and said: 

“Aren’t you very cold?”

I said that I was, but that it did not matter; what I really minded was spoiling my dress and, as I was not a kangaroo, I feared the worst.  After this we entered into conversation and he told me among other things that, when he had been pilled for a sporting club in Paris, he had revenged himself by buying the club and the site upon which it was built, to which I observed: 

“You must be very rich.”

He asked me where I had lived and seemed surprised that I had never heard of him.

The next time we met each other was in Paris.  I lunched with him and his wife and he gave me his opera box and mounted me in the Bois de Boulogne.