Sentence:  Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times scraps of their conversation across the room. At first I could not make much sense of what I heard; for the <WSD>discourse</WSD> of Louisa Eshton and Mary Ingram, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that reached me at intervals. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Verbal exchange, conversation.