these.

"Your ears must have been burning," she ventured, "while we were on the
yacht with Mme. Verdurin. We were talking about you all the time."

Swann was genuinely astonished, for he supposed that his name was never
uttered in the Verdurins' presence.

"You see," Mme. Cottard went on, "Mme. de Crecy was there; need I say
more? When Odette is anywhere it's never long before she begins talking
about you. And you know quite well, it isn't nasty things she says.
What! you don't believe me!" she went on, noticing that Svrann looked
sceptical. And, carried away by the sincerity of her conviction, without
putting any evil meaning into the word, which she used purely in the
sense in which one employs it to speak of the affection that unites a
pair of friends: "Why, she _adores_ you! No, indeed; I'm sure it would
never do to say anything against you when she was about; one would soon
be taught one's place! Whatever we might be doing, if we were looking at
a picture, for instance, she would say, 'If only we had him here, he's
the man who could tell us whether it's genuine or not. There's no one
like him for that.' And all day long she would be saying, 'What can
he be doing just now? I do hope, he's doing a little work! It's too
dreadful that a fellow with such gifts as he has should be so lazy.'
(Forgive me, won't you.) 'I can see him this very moment; he's thinking
of us, he's wondering where we are.' Indeed, she used an expression
which I thought very pretty at the time. M. Verdurin asked her, 'How in
the world can you see what he's doing, when he's a thousand miles away?'
And Odette answered, 'Nothing is impossible to the eye of a friend.'

"No, I assure you, I'm not saying it just to flatter you; you have a
true friend in her, such as one doesn't often find. I can tell you,
besides, in case you don't know it, that you're the only one. Mme.
Verdurin told me as much herself on our last day with them (one talks
more freely, don't you know, before a parting), 'I don't say that Odette
isn't fond of us, but anything that we may say to her counts for very
little beside what Swann might say.' Oh, mercy, there's the conductor
stopping for me; here have I been chatting away to you, and would have
gone right past the Rue Bonaparte, and never noticed... Will you be so
very kind as to tell me whether my plume is straight?"

And Mme. Cottard withdrew from her muff, to offer it to Swann, a
white-gloved hand from which there floated