Mad Barbara by Warwick Deeping

My Lord of Gore's coach carried Anne Purcell and her daughter back to Westminster, for the gathering at the house at Bushy had dispersed prematurely, owing to sundry regrettable differences of opinion that had arisen between the three elder women. My lord himself travelled cityward with the Purcells, as though discountenancing Mrs. Catharine Gore, who had been spirited by Lady Marden and her daughter away in her coach to Kensington. For the quarrel, such as it was, had originated in Mrs. Kate's deafness and her utter lack of reasonable discretion, since her loud and irritable tongue had not only set the two elder ladies by the ears, but had driven even her stately brother to a tempestuous ruffling of his dignity. The repartee had verged on coarseness, for Mrs. Catharine Gore was the most exasperating person to argue with on the face of God's earth. Her deafness, exaggerated for the occasion, made her impregnable both against weight of metal and sharpness of wit. And she could retaliate in the most violent and acrid fashion, pretending all the time that she had mistaken the rival disputant's meaning.

Thus when my lord had persisted with some heat and an impressive dogmatism that his sister painted her prejudices too vividly, Mrs. Kate had seized the chance of flinging an explosive retort into the midst of the party.