tea-table talk

Though Georgina maintained the conversation for some time longer, keeping up that little game of meaningless remark and reply which suffices for tea-table talk, her whole mind was bent upon what could possibly be the mystery he alluded to.

Gradually, as Philip became a fixture in the family circle, his name crept into Elizabeth's tea-table talk.

To associate their names with anything that ministers to gossip; to make them tea-table talk; still worse, to expose them to sneering and impertinent criticisms, by revealing the secrets of their domesticity, is a torture to which no mere physical suffering has anything to compare.

“And have my proceedings and follies really served as tea-table talk to the New Orleans’ gossips?” said I. “Don’t let that annoy you,” replied Ménou.

"What a perfectly gruesome subject for tea-table talk," he said lightly, and beckoned the head-waiter.