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diff --git a/old/dasym10.txt b/old/dasym10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5773686 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/dasym10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2892 @@ +**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Daisy Miller, by Henry James** + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + +The text is that of the first American appearance in book form, 1879. + + +DAISY MILLER: A STUDY + + +IN TWO PARTS + + +PART I + + +At the little town of Vevey, in Switzerland, there is a +particularly comfortable hotel. There are, indeed, many hotels, +for the entertainment of tourists is the business of the place, +which, as many travelers will remember, is seated upon the edge +of a remarkably blue lake--a lake that it behooves every tourist +to visit. The shore of the lake presents an unbroken array +of establishments of this order, of every category, from the +"grand hotel" of the newest fashion, with a chalk-white front, +a hundred balconies, and a dozen flags flying from its roof, +to the little Swiss pension of an elder day, with its name +inscribed in German-looking lettering upon a pink or yellow +wall and an awkward summerhouse in the angle of the garden. +One of the hotels at Vevey, however, is famous, even classical, +being distinguished from many of its upstart neighbors +by an air both of luxury and of maturity. In this region, +in the month of June, American travelers are extremely numerous; +it may be said, indeed, that Vevey assumes at this period +some of the characteristics of an American watering place. +There are sights and sounds which evoke a vision, an echo, +of Newport and Saratoga. There is a flitting hither and thither +of "stylish" young girls, a rustling of muslin flounces, +a rattle of dance music in the morning hours, a sound of +high-pitched voices at all times. You receive an impression +of these things at the excellent inn of the "Trois Couronnes" +and are transported in fancy to the Ocean House or to Congress Hall. +But at the "Trois Couronnes," it must be added, there are other +features that are much at variance with these suggestions: +neat German waiters, who look like secretaries of legation; +Russian princesses sitting in the garden; little Polish +boys walking about held by the hand, with their governors; +a view of the sunny crest of the Dent du Midi and the picturesque +towers of the Castle of Chillon. + +I hardly know whether it was the analogies or the differences that were +uppermost in the mind of a young American, who, two or three years ago, +sat in the garden of the "Trois Couronnes," looking about him, +rather idly, at some of the graceful objects I have mentioned. +It was a beautiful summer morning, and in whatever fashion the young +American looked at things, they must have seemed to him charming. +He had come from Geneva the day before by the little steamer, +to see his aunt, who was staying at the hotel--Geneva having been +for a long time his place of residence. But his aunt had a headache-- +his aunt had almost always a headache--and now she was shut up in +her room, smelling camphor, so that he was at liberty to wander about. +He was some seven-and-twenty years of age; when his friends spoke +of him, they usually said that he was at Geneva "studying." +When his enemies spoke of him, they said--but, after all, he had +no enemies; he was an extremely amiable fellow, and universally liked. +What I should say is, simply, that when certain persons spoke +of him they affirmed that the reason of his spending so much +time at Geneva was that he was extremely devoted to a lady +who lived there--a foreign lady--a person older than himself. +Very few Americans--indeed, I think none--had ever seen this lady, +about whom there were some singular stories. But Winterbourne +had an old attachment for the little metropolis of Calvinism; +he had been put to school there as a boy, and he had afterward +gone to college there--circumstances which had led to his forming +a great many youthful friendships. Many of these he had kept, +and they were a source of great satisfaction to him. + +After knocking at his aunt's door and learning that she was indisposed, +he had taken a walk about the town, and then he had come in to +his breakfast. He had now finished his breakfast; but he was drinking +a small cup of coffee, which had been served to him on a little table +in the garden by one of the waiters who looked like an attache. +At last he finished his coffee and lit a cigarette. Presently a +small boy came walking along the path--an urchin of nine or ten. +The child, who was diminutive for his years, had an aged expression +of countenance, a pale complexion, and sharp little features. +He was dressed in knickerbockers, with red stockings, which displayed +his poor little spindle-shanks; he also wore a brilliant red cravat. +He carried in his hand a long alpenstock, the sharp point of which +he thrust into everything that he approached--the flowerbeds, +the garden benches, the trains of the ladies' dresses. In front +of Winterbourne he paused, looking at him with a pair of bright, +penetrating little eyes. + +"Will you give me a lump of sugar?" he asked in a sharp, hard little voice-- +a voice immature and yet, somehow, not young. + +Winterbourne glanced at the small table near him, on which his coffee +service rested, and saw that several morsels of sugar remained. +"Yes, you may take one," he answered; "but I don't think sugar +is good for little boys." + +This little boy stepped forward and carefully selected three of +the coveted fragments, two of which he buried in the pocket of +his knickerbockers, depositing the other as promptly in another place. +He poked his alpenstock, lance-fashion, into Winterbourne's bench +and tried to crack the lump of sugar with his teeth. + +"Oh, blazes; it's har-r-d!" he exclaimed, pronouncing the adjective +in a peculiar manner. + +Winterbourne had immediately perceived that he might +have the honor of claiming him as a fellow countryman. +"Take care you don't hurt your teeth," he said, paternally. + +"I haven't got any teeth to hurt. They have all come out. +I have only got seven teeth. My mother counted them last night, +and one came out right afterward. She said she'd slap me +if any more came out. I can't help it. It's this old Europe. +It's the climate that makes them come out. In America they +didn't come out. It's these hotels." + +Winterbourne was much amused. "If you eat three lumps of sugar, +your mother will certainly slap you," he said. + +"She's got to give me some candy, then," rejoined his young interlocutor. +"I can't get any candy here--any American candy. American candy's +the best candy." + +"And are American little boys the best little boys?" asked Winterbourne. + +"I don't know. I'm an American boy," said the child. + +"I see you are one of the best!" laughed Winterbourne. + +"Are you an American man?" pursued this vivacious infant. +And then, on Winterbourne's affirmative reply--"American men +are the best," he declared. + +His companion thanked him for the compliment, and the child, +who had now got astride of his alpenstock, stood looking +about him, while he attacked a second lump of sugar. +Winterbourne wondered if he himself had been like this in his infancy, +for he had been brought to Europe at about this age. + +"Here comes my sister!" cried the child in a moment. +"She's an American girl." + +Winterbourne looked along the path and saw a beautiful +young lady advancing. "American girls are the best girls," +he said cheerfully to his young companion. + +"My sister ain't the best!" the child declared. +"She's always blowing at me." + +"I imagine that is your fault, not hers," said Winterbourne. +The young lady meanwhile had drawn near. She was dressed in white muslin, +with a hundred frills and flounces, and knots of pale-colored ribbon. +She was bareheaded, but she balanced in her hand a large parasol, +with a deep border of embroidery; and she was strikingly, admirably pretty. +"How pretty they are!" thought Winterbourne, straightening himself +in his seat, as if he were prepared to rise. + +The young lady paused in front of his bench, near the parapet of the garden, +which overlooked the lake. The little boy had now converted his alpenstock +into a vaulting pole, by the aid of which he was springing about in the gravel +and kicking it up not a little. + +"Randolph," said the young lady, "what ARE you doing?" + +"I'm going up the Alps," replied Randolph. "This is the way!" +And he gave another little jump, scattering the pebbles +about Winterbourne's ears. + +"That's the way they come down," said Winterbourne. + +"He's an American man!" cried Randolph, in his little hard voice. + +The young lady gave no heed to this announcement, but looked +straight at her brother. "Well, I guess you had better be quiet," +she simply observed. + +It seemed to Winterbourne that he had been in a manner presented. He got +up and stepped slowly toward the young girl, throwing away his cigarette. +"This little boy and I have made acquaintance," he said, with great civility. +In Geneva, as he had been perfectly aware, a young man was not at liberty +to speak to a young unmarried lady except under certain rarely occurring +conditions; but here at Vevey, what conditions could be better than these?-- +a pretty American girl coming and standing in front of you in a garden. +This pretty American girl, however, on hearing Winterbourne's observation, +simply glanced at him; she then turned her head and looked over the parapet, +at the lake and the opposite mountains. He wondered whether he had gone +too far, but he decided that he must advance farther, rather than retreat. +While he was thinking of something else to say, the young lady turned +to the little boy again. + +"I should like to know where you got that pole," she said. + +"I bought it," responded Randolph. + +"You don't mean to say you're going to take it to Italy?" + +"Yes, I am going to take it to Italy," the child declared. + +The young girl glanced over the front of her dress and smoothed out a knot +or two of ribbon. Then she rested her eyes upon the prospect again. +"Well, I guess you had better leave it somewhere," she said after a moment. + +"Are you going to Italy?" Winterbourne inquired in a tone +of great respect. + +The young lady glanced at him again. "Yes, sir," she replied. +And she said nothing more. + +"Are you--a-- going over the Simplon?" Winterbourne pursued, +a little embarrassed. + +"I don't know," she said. "I suppose it's some mountain. +Randolph, what mountain are we going over?" + +"Going where?" the child demanded. + +"To Italy," Winterbourne explained. + +"I don't know," said Randolph. "I don't want to go to Italy. +I want to go to America." + +"Oh, Italy is a beautiful place!" rejoined the young man. + +"Can you get candy there?" Randolph loudly inquired. + +"I hope not," said his sister. "I guess you have had enough candy, +and mother thinks so too." + +"I haven't had any for ever so long--for a hundred weeks!" +cried the boy, still jumping about. + +The young lady inspected her flounces and smoothed her ribbons again; +and Winterbourne presently risked an observation upon the beauty +of the view. He was ceasing to be embarrassed, for he had begun +to perceive that she was not in the least embarrassed herself. +There had not been the slightest alteration in her charming complexion; +she was evidently neither offended nor flattered. +If she looked another way when he spoke to her, and seemed not +particularly to hear him, this was simply her habit, her manner. +Yet, as he talked a little more and pointed out some of the objects +of interest in the view, with which she appeared quite unacquainted, +she gradually gave him more of the benefit of her glance; and then +he saw that this glance was perfectly direct and unshrinking. +It was not, however, what would have been called an immodest glance, +for the young girl's eyes were singularly honest and fresh. +They were wonderfully pretty eyes; and, indeed, Winterbourne had not +seen for a long time anything prettier than his fair countrywoman's +various features--her complexion, her nose, her ears, her teeth. +He had a great relish for feminine beauty; he was addicted to +observing and analyzing it; and as regards this young lady's face +he made several observations. It was not at all insipid, but it +was not exactly expressive; and though it was eminently delicate, +Winterbourne mentally accused it--very forgivingly--of a want of finish. +He thought it very possible that Master Randolph's sister was a coquette; +he was sure she had a spirit of her own; but in her bright, +sweet, superficial little visage there was no mockery, no irony. +Before long it became obvious that she was much disposed +toward conversation. She told him that they were going to Rome +for the winter--she and her mother and Randolph. She asked him +if he was a "real American"; she shouldn't have taken him for one; +he seemed more like a German--this was said after a little hesitation-- +especially when he spoke. Winterbourne, laughing, answered that +he had met Germans who spoke like Americans, but that he had not, +so far as he remembered, met an American who spoke like a German. +Then he asked her if she should not be more comfortable in sitting +upon the bench which he had just quitted. She answered that she +liked standing up and walking about; but she presently sat down. +She told him she was from New York State--"if you know where that is." +Winterbourne learned more about her by catching hold of her small, +slippery brother and making him stand a few minutes by his side. + +"Tell me your name, my boy," he said. + +"Randolph C. Miller," said the boy sharply. "And I'll tell you her name"; +and he leveled his alpenstock at his sister. + +"You had better wait till you are asked!" said this young lady calmly. + +"I should like very much to know your name," said Winterbourne. + +"Her name is Daisy Miller!" cried the child. "But that isn't her real name; +that isn't her name on her cards." + +"It's a pity you haven't got one of my cards!" said Miss Miller. + +"Her real name is Annie P. Miller," the boy went on. + +"Ask him HIS name," said his sister, indicating Winterbourne. + +But on this point Randolph seemed perfectly indifferent; +he continued to supply information with regard to his own family. +"My father's name is Ezra B. Miller," he announced. +"My father ain't in Europe; my father's in a better +place than Europe." + +Winterbourne imagined for a moment that this was the manner +in which the child had been taught to intimate that Mr. Miller +had been removed to the sphere of celestial reward. +But Randolph immediately added, "My father's in Schenectady. +He's got a big business. My father's rich, you bet!" + +"Well!" ejaculated Miss Miller, lowering her parasol and looking +at the embroidered border. Winterbourne presently released +the child, who departed, dragging his alpenstock along the path. +"He doesn't like Europe," said the young girl. "He wants +to go back." + +"To Schenectady, you mean?" + +"Yes; he wants to go right home. He hasn't got any boys here. +There is one boy here, but he always goes round with a teacher; +they won't let him play." + +"And your brother hasn't any teacher?" Winterbourne inquired. + +"Mother thought of getting him one, to travel round with us. +There was a lady told her of a very good teacher; +an American lady--perhaps you know her--Mrs. Sanders. +I think she came from Boston. She told her of this teacher, +and we thought of getting him to travel round with us. +But Randolph said he didn't want a teacher traveling round with us. +He said he wouldn't have lessons when he was in the cars. +And we ARE in the cars about half the time. There was an English +lady we met in the cars--I think her name was Miss Featherstone; +perhaps you know her. She wanted to know why I didn't give +Randolph lessons--give him 'instruction,' she called it. +I guess he could give me more instruction than I could give him. +He's very smart." + +"Yes," said Winterbourne; "he seems very smart." + +"Mother's going to get a teacher for him as soon as we get to Italy. +Can you get good teachers in Italy?" + +"Very good, I should think," said Winterbourne. + +"Or else she's going to find some school. He ought to learn +some more. He's only nine. He's going to college." +And in this way Miss Miller continued to converse upon the affairs +of her family and upon other topics. She sat there with her +extremely pretty hands, ornamented with very brilliant rings, +folded in her lap, and with her pretty eyes now resting upon +those of Winterbourne, now wandering over the garden, the people +who passed by, and the beautiful view. She talked to Winterbourne +as if she had known him a long time. He found it very pleasant. +It was many years since he had heard a young girl talk so much. +It might have been said of this unknown young lady, who had come +and sat down beside him upon a bench, that she chattered. +She was very quiet; she sat in a charming, tranquil attitude; +but her lips and her eyes were constantly moving. She had a soft, +slender, agreeable voice, and her tone was decidedly sociable. +She gave Winterbourne a history of her movements and intentions +and those of her mother and brother, in Europe, and enumerated, +in particular, the various hotels at which they had stopped. +"That English lady in the cars," she said--"Miss Featherstone-- +asked me if we didn't all live in hotels in America. +I told her I had never been in so many hotels in my life as since I +came to Europe. I have never seen so many--it's nothing but hotels." +But Miss Miller did not make this remark with a querulous accent; +she appeared to be in the best humor with everything. +She declared that the hotels were very good, when once you +got used to their ways, and that Europe was perfectly sweet. +She was not disappointed--not a bit. Perhaps it was because +she had heard so much about it before. She had ever so many +intimate friends that had been there ever so many times. +And then she had had ever so many dresses and things from Paris. +Whenever she put on a Paris dress she felt as if she +were in Europe. + +"It was a kind of a wishing cap," said Winterbourne. + +"Yes," said Miss Miller without examining this analogy; +"it always made me wish I was here. But I needn't have +done that for dresses. I am sure they send all the pretty +ones to America; you see the most frightful things here. +The only thing I don't like," she proceeded, "is the society. +There isn't any society; or, if there is, I don't know +where it keeps itself. Do you? I suppose there is some +society somewhere, but I haven't seen anything of it. +I'm very fond of society, and I have always had a great deal of it. +I don't mean only in Schenectady, but in New York. +I used to go to New York every winter. In New York I had lots +of society. Last winter I had seventeen dinners given me; +and three of them were by gentlemen," added Daisy Miller. +"I have more friends in New York than in Schenectady-- +more gentleman friends; and more young lady friends too," +she resumed in a moment. She paused again for an instant; +she was looking at Winterbourne with all her prettiness in her +lively eyes and in her light, slightly monotonous smile. +"I have always had," she said, "a great deal of gentlemen's society." + +Poor Winterbourne was amused, perplexed, and decidedly charmed. +He had never yet heard a young girl express herself in just +this fashion; never, at least, save in cases where to say such +things seemed a kind of demonstrative evidence of a certain +laxity of deportment. And yet was he to accuse Miss Daisy Miller +of actual or potential inconduite, as they said at Geneva? +He felt that he had lived at Geneva so long that he had lost +a good deal; he had become dishabituated to the American tone. +Never, indeed, since he had grown old enough to appreciate things, +had he encountered a young American girl of so pronounced a type as this. +Certainly she was very charming, but how deucedly sociable! +Was she simply a pretty girl from New York State? Were they all +like that, the pretty girls who had a good deal of gentlemen's society? +Or was she also a designing, an audacious, an unscrupulous young person? +Winterbourne had lost his instinct in this matter, and his reason +could not help him. Miss Daisy Miller looked extremely innocent. +Some people had told him that, after all, American girls +were exceedingly innocent; and others had told him that, +after all, they were not. He was inclined to think Miss Daisy +Miller was a flirt--a pretty American flirt. He had never, +as yet, had any relations with young ladies of this category. +He had known, here in Europe, two or three women--persons older +than Miss Daisy Miller, and provided, for respectability's sake, +with husbands--who were great coquettes--dangerous, terrible women, +with whom one's relations were liable to take a serious turn. +But this young girl was not a coquette in that sense; she was +very unsophisticated; she was only a pretty American flirt. +Winterbourne was almost grateful for having found the formula +that applied to Miss Daisy Miller. He leaned back in his seat; +he remarked to himself that she had the most charming nose +he had ever seen; he wondered what were the regular conditions +and limitations of one's intercourse with a pretty American flirt. +It presently became apparent that he was on the way to learn. + +"Have you been to that old castle?" asked the young girl, pointing with her +parasol to the far-gleaming walls of the Chateau de Chillon. + +"Yes, formerly, more than once," said Winterbourne. +"You too, I suppose, have seen it?" + +"No; we haven't been there. I want to go there dreadfully. +Of course I mean to go there. I wouldn't go away from here +without having seen that old castle." + +"It's a very pretty excursion," said Winterbourne, "and very easy to make. +You can drive, you know, or you can go by the little steamer." + +"You can go in the cars," said Miss Miller. + +"Yes; you can go in the cars," Winterbourne assented. + +"Our courier says they take you right up to the castle," the young +girl continued. "We were going last week, but my mother gave out. +She suffers dreadfully from dyspepsia. She said she couldn't go. +Randolph wouldn't go either; he says he doesn't think much of old castles. +But I guess we'll go this week, if we can get Randolph." + +"Your brother is not interested in ancient monuments?" +Winterbourne inquired, smiling. + +"He says he don't care much about old castles. He's only nine. +He wants to stay at the hotel. Mother's afraid to leave him alone, +and the courier won't stay with him; so we haven't been to many places. +But it will be too bad if we don't go up there." And Miss Miller +pointed again at the Chateau de Chillon. + +"I should think it might be arranged," said Winterbourne. +"Couldn't you get some one to stay for the afternoon with Randolph?" + +Miss Miller looked at him a moment, and then, very placidly, +"I wish YOU would stay with him!" she said. + +Winterbourne hesitated a moment. "I should much rather go +to Chillon with you." + +"With me?" asked the young girl with the same placidity. + +She didn't rise, blushing, as a young girl at Geneva would have done; +and yet Winterbourne, conscious that he had been very bold, +thought it possible she was offended. "With your mother," +he answered very respectfully. + +But it seemed that both his audacity and his respect were lost +upon Miss Daisy Miller. "I guess my mother won't go, after all," +she said. "She don't like to ride round in the afternoon. +But did you really mean what you said just now--that you would +like to go up there?" + +"Most earnestly," Winterbourne declared. + +"Then we may arrange it. If mother will stay with Randolph, +I guess Eugenio will." + +"Eugenio?" the young man inquired. + +"Eugenio's our courier. He doesn't like to stay with Randolph; +he's the most fastidious man I ever saw. But he's a splendid courier. +I guess he'll stay at home with Randolph if mother does, and then +we can go to the castle." + +Winterbourne reflected for an instant as lucidly as possible-- +"we" could only mean Miss Daisy Miller and himself. +This program seemed almost too agreeable for credence; +he felt as if he ought to kiss the young lady's hand. +Possibly he would have done so and quite spoiled the project, +but at this moment another person, presumably Eugenio, appeared. +A tall, handsome man, with superb whiskers, wearing a velvet +morning coat and a brilliant watch chain, approached Miss Miller, +looking sharply at her companion. "Oh, Eugenio!" said Miss +Miller with the friendliest accent. + +Eugenio had looked at Winterbourne from head to foot; +he now bowed gravely to the young lady. "I have the honor +to inform mademoiselle that luncheon is upon the table." + +Miss Miller slowly rose. "See here, Eugenio!" she said; +"I'm going to that old castle, anyway." + +"To the Chateau de Chillon, mademoiselle?" the courier inquired. +"Mademoiselle has made arrangements?" he added in a tone which struck +Winterbourne as very impertinent. + +Eugenio's tone apparently threw, even to Miss Miller's own apprehension, +a slightly ironical light upon the young girl's situation. +She turned to Winterbourne, blushing a little--a very little. +"You won't back out?" she said. + +"I shall not be happy till we go!" he protested. + +"And you are staying in this hotel?" she went on. +"And you are really an American?" + +The courier stood looking at Winterbourne offensively. The young man, +at least, thought his manner of looking an offense to Miss Miller; +it conveyed an imputation that she "picked up" acquaintances. "I shall +have the honor of presenting to you a person who will tell you all about me," +he said, smiling and referring to his aunt. + +"Oh, well, we'll go some day," said Miss Miller. +And she gave him a smile and turned away. She put up +her parasol and walked back to the inn beside Eugenio. +Winterbourne stood looking after her; and as she moved away, +drawing her muslin furbelows over the gravel, said to himself +that she had the tournure of a princess. + +He had, however, engaged to do more than proved feasible, in promising +to present his aunt, Mrs. Costello, to Miss Daisy Miller. +As soon as the former lady had got better of her headache, +he waited upon her in her apartment; and, after the proper +inquiries in regard to her health, he asked her if she had +observed in the hotel an American family--a mamma, a daughter, +and a little boy. + +"And a courier?" said Mrs. Costello. "Oh yes, I have observed them. +Seen them--heard them--and kept out of their way." Mrs. Costello was +a widow with a fortune; a person of much distinction, who frequently +intimated that, if she were not so dreadfully liable to sick headaches, +she would probably have left a deeper impress upon her time. She had a long, +pale face, a high nose, and a great deal of very striking white hair, +which she wore in large puffs and rouleaux over the top of her head. +She had two sons married in New York and another who was now in Europe. +This young man was amusing himself at Hamburg, and, though he was +on his travels, was rarely perceived to visit any particular city +at the moment selected by his mother for her own appearance there. +Her nephew, who had come up to Vevey expressly to see her, was therefore +more attentive than those who, as she said, were nearer to her. +He had imbibed at Geneva the idea that one must always be attentive +to one's aunt. Mrs. Costello had not seen him for many years, +and she was greatly pleased with him, manifesting her approbation +by initiating him into many of the secrets of that social sway which, +as she gave him to understand, she exerted in the American capital. +She admitted that she was very exclusive; but, if he were acquainted with +New York, he would see that one had to be. And her picture of the minutely +hierarchical constitution of the society of that city, which she presented +to him in many different lights, was, to Winterbourne's imagination, +almost oppressively striking. + +He immediately perceived, from her tone, that Miss Daisy Miller's +place in the social scale was low. "I am afraid you don't approve +of them," he said. + +"They are very common," Mrs. Costello declared. "They are the sort +of Americans that one does one's duty by not--not accepting." + +"Ah, you don't accept them?" said the young man. + +"I can't, my dear Frederick. I would if I could, but I can't." + +"The young girl is very pretty," said Winterbourne in a moment. + +"Of course she's pretty. But she is very common." + +"I see what you mean, of course," said Winterbourne after another pause. + +"She has that charming look that they all have," his aunt resumed. +"I can't think where they pick it up; and she dresses +in perfection--no, you don't know how well she dresses. +I can't think where they get their taste." + +"But, my dear aunt, she is not, after all, a Comanche savage." + +"She is a young lady," said Mrs. Costello, "who has an intimacy +with her mamma's courier." + +"An intimacy with the courier?" the young man demanded. + +"Oh, the mother is just as bad! They treat the courier +like a familiar friend--like a gentleman. I shouldn't wonder +if he dines with them. Very likely they have never seen a man +with such good manners, such fine clothes, so like a gentleman. +He probably corresponds to the young lady's idea of a count. +He sits with them in the garden in the evening. +I think he smokes." + +Winterbourne listened with interest to these disclosures; +they helped him to make up his mind about Miss Daisy. +Evidently she was rather wild. "Well," he said, "I am not +a courier, and yet she was very charming to me." + +"You had better have said at first," said Mrs. Costello with dignity, +"that you had made her acquaintance." + +"We simply met in the garden, and we talked a bit." + +"Tout bonnement! And pray what did you say?" + +"I said I should take the liberty of introducing her to my admirable aunt." + +"I am much obliged to you." + +"It was to guarantee my respectability," said Winterbourne. + +"And pray who is to guarantee hers?" + +"Ah, you are cruel!" said the young man. "She's a very nice young girl." + +"You don't say that as if you believed it," Mrs. Costello observed. + +"She is completely uncultivated," Winterbourne went on. +"But she is wonderfully pretty, and, in short, she is very nice. +To prove that I believe it, I am going to take her to the +Chateau de Chillon." + +"You two are going off there together? I should say it +proved just the contrary. How long had you known her, +may I ask, when this interesting project was formed? +You haven't been twenty-four hours in the house." + +"I have known her half an hour!" said Winterbourne, smiling. + +"Dear me!" cried Mrs. Costello. "What a dreadful girl!" + +Her nephew was silent for some moments. "You really think, then," +he began earnestly, and with a desire for trustworthy information--"you +really think that--" But he paused again. + +"Think what, sir?" said his aunt. + +"That she is the sort of young lady who expects a man, sooner or later, +to carry her off?" + +"I haven't the least idea what such young ladies expect a man to do. +But I really think that you had better not meddle with little American +girls that are uncultivated, as you call them. You have lived too long +out of the country. You will be sure to make some great mistake. +You are too innocent." + +"My dear aunt, I am not so innocent," said Winterbourne, +smiling and curling his mustache. + +"You are guilty too, then!" + +Winterbourne continued to curl his mustache meditatively. +"You won't let the poor girl know you then?" he asked at last. + +"Is it literally true that she is going to the Chateau de Chillon with you?" + +"I think that she fully intends it." + +"Then, my dear Frederick," said Mrs. Costello, "I must decline the honor +of her acquaintance. I am an old woman, but I am not too old, thank Heaven, +to be shocked!" + +"But don't they all do these things--the young girls in America?" +Winterbourne inquired. + +Mrs. Costello stared a moment. "I should like to see my granddaughters +do them!" she declared grimly. + +This seemed to throw some light upon the matter, for Winterbourne remembered +to have heard that his pretty cousins in New York were "tremendous flirts." +If, therefore, Miss Daisy Miller exceeded the liberal margin allowed to +these young ladies, it was probable that anything might be expected of her. +Winterbourne was impatient to see her again, and he was vexed with himself +that, by instinct, he should not appreciate her justly. + +Though he was impatient to see her, he hardly knew what he should +say to her about his aunt's refusal to become acquainted with her; +but he discovered, promptly enough, that with Miss Daisy Miller there +was no great need of walking on tiptoe. He found her that evening in +the garden, wandering about in the warm starlight like an indolent sylph, +and swinging to and fro the largest fan he had ever beheld. +It was ten o'clock. He had dined with his aunt, had been sitting with +her since dinner, and had just taken leave of her till the morrow. +Miss Daisy Miller seemed very glad to see him; she declared it +was the longest evening she had ever passed. + +"Have you been all alone?" he asked. + +"I have been walking round with mother. But mother gets tired +walking round," she answered. + +"Has she gone to bed?" + +"No; she doesn't like to go to bed," said the young girl. +"She doesn't sleep--not three hours. She says she +doesn't know how she lives. She's dreadfully nervous. +I guess she sleeps more than she thinks. She's gone somewhere +after Randolph; she wants to try to get him to go to bed. +He doesn't like to go to bed." + +"Let us hope she will persuade him," observed Winterbourne. + +"She will talk to him all she can; but he doesn't like her to talk +to him," said Miss Daisy, opening her fan. "She's going to try +to get Eugenio to talk to him. But he isn't afraid of Eugenio. +Eugenio's a splendid courier, but he can't make much impression +on Randolph! I don't believe he'll go to bed before eleven." +It appeared that Randolph's vigil was in fact triumphantly prolonged, +for Winterbourne strolled about with the young girl for some +time without meeting her mother. "I have been looking round +for that lady you want to introduce me to," his companion resumed. +"She's your aunt." Then, on Winterbourne's admitting the fact +and expressing some curiosity as to how she had learned it, +she said she had heard all about Mrs. Costello from the chambermaid. +She was very quiet and very comme il faut; she wore white puffs; +she spoke to no one, and she never dined at the table d'hote. +Every two days she had a headache. "I think that's a lovely +description, headache and all!" said Miss Daisy, chattering along +in her thin, gay voice. "I want to know her ever so much. +I know just what YOUR aunt would be; I know I should like her. +She would be very exclusive. I like a lady to be exclusive; +I'm dying to be exclusive myself. Well, we ARE exclusive, +mother and I. We don't speak to everyone--or they don't speak to us. +I suppose it's about the same thing. Anyway, I shall be ever +so glad to know your aunt." + +Winterbourne was embarrassed. "She would be most happy," he said; +"but I am afraid those headaches will interfere." + +The young girl looked at him through the dusk. +"But I suppose she doesn't have a headache every day," +she said sympathetically. + +Winterbourne was silent a moment. "She tells me she does," +he answered at last, not knowing what to say. + +Miss Daisy Miller stopped and stood looking at him. Her prettiness +was still visible in the darkness; she was opening and closing her +enormous fan. "She doesn't want to know me!" she said suddenly. +"Why don't you say so? You needn't be afraid. I'm not afraid!" +And she gave a little laugh. + +Winterbourne fancied there was a tremor in her voice; he was touched, shocked, +mortified by it. "My dear young lady," he protested, "she knows no one. +It's her wretched health." + +The young girl walked on a few steps, laughing still. +"You needn't be afraid," she repeated. "Why should she want +to know me?" Then she paused again; she was close to the parapet +of the garden, and in front of her was the starlit lake. +There was a vague sheen upon its surface, and in the distance +were dimly seen mountain forms. Daisy Miller looked out upon +the mysterious prospect and then she gave another little laugh. +"Gracious! she IS exclusive!" she said. Winterbourne wondered +whether she was seriously wounded, and for a moment almost +wished that her sense of injury might be such as to make it +becoming in him to attempt to reassure and comfort her. +He had a pleasant sense that she would be very approachable +for consolatory purposes. He felt then, for the instant, +quite ready to sacrifice his aunt, conversationally; to admit +that she was a proud, rude woman, and to declare that they needn't +mind her. But before he had time to commit himself to this +perilous mixture of gallantry and impiety, the young lady, +resuming her walk, gave an exclamation in quite another tone. +"Well, here's Mother! I guess she hasn't got Randolph to go to bed." +The figure of a lady appeared at a distance, very indistinct +in the darkness, and advancing with a slow and wavering movement. +Suddenly it seemed to pause. + +"Are you sure it is your mother? Can you distinguish her in this +thick dusk?" Winterbourne asked. + +"Well!" cried Miss Daisy Miller with a laugh; "I guess I know my own mother. +And when she has got on my shawl, too! She is always wearing my things." + +The lady in question, ceasing to advance, hovered vaguely about the spot +at which she had checked her steps. + +"I am afraid your mother doesn't see you," said Winterbourne. +"Or perhaps," he added, thinking, with Miss Miller, the joke +permissible--"perhaps she feels guilty about your shawl." + +"Oh, it's a fearful old thing!" the young girl replied serenely. +"I told her she could wear it. She won't come here because she sees you." + +"Ah, then," said Winterbourne, "I had better leave you." + +"Oh, no; come on!" urged Miss Daisy Miller. + +"I'm afraid your mother doesn't approve of my walking with you." + +Miss Miller gave him a serious glance. "It isn't for me; +it's for you--that is, it's for HER. Well, I don't know who +it's for! But mother doesn't like any of my gentlemen friends. +She's right down timid. She always makes a fuss if I introduce +a gentleman. But I DO introduce them--almost always. +If I didn't introduce my gentlemen friends to Mother," +the young girl added in her little soft, flat monotone, +"I shouldn't think I was natural." + +"To introduce me," said Winterbourne, "you must know my name." +And he proceeded to pronounce it. + +"Oh, dear, I can't say all that!" said his companion with a laugh. +But by this time they had come up to Mrs. Miller, who, as they +drew near, walked to the parapet of the garden and leaned upon it, +looking intently at the lake and turning her back to them. +"Mother!" said the young girl in a tone of decision. +Upon this the elder lady turned round. "Mr. Winterbourne," said Miss +Daisy Miller, introducing the young man very frankly and prettily. +"Common," she was, as Mrs. Costello had pronounced her; +yet it was a wonder to Winterbourne that, with her commonness, +she had a singularly delicate grace. + +Her mother was a small, spare, light person, with a +wandering eye, a very exiguous nose, and a large forehead, +decorated with a certain amount of thin, much frizzled hair. +Like her daughter, Mrs. Miller was dressed with extreme elegance; +she had enormous diamonds in her ears. So far as Winterbourne +could observe, she gave him no greeting--she certainly was not +looking at him. Daisy was near her, pulling her shawl straight. +"What are you doing, poking round here?" this young lady inquired, +but by no means with that harshness of accent which her choice +of words may imply. + +"I don't know," said her mother, turning toward the lake again. + +"I shouldn't think you'd want that shawl!" Daisy exclaimed. + +"Well I do!" her mother answered with a little laugh. + +"Did you get Randolph to go to bed?" asked the young girl. + +"No; I couldn't induce him," said Mrs. Miller very gently. +"He wants to talk to the waiter. He likes to talk to that waiter." + +"I was telling Mr. Winterbourne," the young girl went on; +and to the young man's ear her tone might have indicated +that she had been uttering his name all her life. + +"Oh, yes!" said Winterbourne; "I have the pleasure of knowing your son." + +Randolph's mamma was silent; she turned her attention to the lake. +But at last she spoke. "Well, I don't see how he lives!" + +"Anyhow, it isn't so bad as it was at Dover," said Daisy Miller. + +"And what occurred at Dover?" Winterbourne asked. + +"He wouldn't go to bed at all. I guess he sat up all night +in the public parlor. He wasn't in bed at twelve o'clock: +I know that." + +"It was half-past twelve," declared Mrs. Miller with mild emphasis. + +"Does he sleep much during the day?" Winterbourne demanded. + +"I guess he doesn't sleep much," Daisy rejoined. + +"I wish he would!" said her mother. "It seems as if he couldn't." + +"I think he's real tiresome," Daisy pursued. + +Then, for some moments, there was silence. "Well, Daisy Miller," +said the elder lady, presently, "I shouldn't think you'd want +to talk against your own brother!" + +"Well, he IS tiresome, Mother," said Daisy, quite without +the asperity of a retort. + +"He's only nine," urged Mrs. Miller. + +"Well, he wouldn't go to that castle," said the young girl. +"I'm going there with Mr. Winterbourne." + +To this announcement, very placidly made, Daisy's mamma offered +no response. Winterbourne took for granted that she deeply +disapproved of the projected excursion; but he said to himself +that she was a simple, easily managed person, and that a few +deferential protestations would take the edge from her displeasure. +"Yes," he began; "your daughter has kindly allowed me the honor +of being her guide." + +Mrs. Miller's wandering eyes attached themselves, with a sort of +appealing air, to Daisy, who, however, strolled a few steps farther, +gently humming to herself. "I presume you will go in the cars," +said her mother. + +"Yes, or in the boat," said Winterbourne. + +"Well, of course, I don't know," Mrs. Miller rejoined. +"I have never been to that castle." + +"It is a pity you shouldn't go," said Winterbourne, +beginning to feel reassured as to her opposition. +And yet he was quite prepared to find that, as a matter of course, +she meant to accompany her daughter. + +"We've been thinking ever so much about going," she pursued; +"but it seems as if we couldn't. Of course Daisy--she wants +to go round. But there's a lady here--I don't know her name-- +she says she shouldn't think we'd want to go to see castles +HERE; she should think we'd want to wait till we got +to Italy. It seems as if there would be so many there," +continued Mrs. Miller with an air of increasing confidence. +"Of course we only want to see the principal ones. +We visited several in England," she presently added. + +"Ah yes! in England there are beautiful castles," said Winterbourne. +"But Chillon here, is very well worth seeing." + +"Well, if Daisy feels up to it--" said Mrs. Miller, in a tone +impregnated with a sense of the magnitude of the enterprise. +"It seems as if there was nothing she wouldn't undertake." + +"Oh, I think she'll enjoy it!" Winterbourne declared. +And he desired more and more to make it a certainty that he was +to have the privilege of a tete-a-tete with the young lady, +who was still strolling along in front of them, softly vocalizing. +"You are not disposed, madam," he inquired, "to undertake it yourself?" + +Daisy's mother looked at him an instant askance, and then walked +forward in silence. Then--"I guess she had better go alone," +she said simply. Winterbourne observed to himself that this +was a very different type of maternity from that of the vigilant +matrons who massed themselves in the forefront of social +intercourse in the dark old city at the other end of the lake. +But his meditations were interrupted by hearing his name very +distinctly pronounced by Mrs. Miller's unprotected daughter. + +"Mr. Winterbourne!" murmured Daisy. + +"Mademoiselle!" said the young man. + +"Don't you want to take me out in a boat?" + +"At present?" he asked. + +"Of course!" said Daisy. + +"Well, Annie Miller!" exclaimed her mother. + +"I beg you, madam, to let her go," said Winterbourne ardently; +for he had never yet enjoyed the sensation of guiding +through the summer starlight a skiff freighted with a fresh +and beautiful young girl. + +"I shouldn't think she'd want to," said her mother. +"I should think she'd rather go indoors." + +"I'm sure Mr. Winterbourne wants to take me," Daisy declared. +"He's so awfully devoted!" + +"I will row you over to Chillon in the starlight." + +"I don't believe it!" said Daisy. + +"Well!" ejaculated the elder lady again. + +"You haven't spoken to me for half an hour," her daughter went on. + +"I have been having some very pleasant conversation with +your mother," said Winterbourne. + +"Well, I want you to take me out in a boat!" Daisy repeated. They had +all stopped, and she had turned round and was looking at Winterbourne. +Her face wore a charming smile, her pretty eyes were gleaming, +she was swinging her great fan about. No; it's impossible to be prettier +than that, thought Winterbourne. + +"There are half a dozen boats moored at that landing place," he said, +pointing to certain steps which descended from the garden to the lake. +"If you will do me the honor to accept my arm, we will go and select +one of them." + +Daisy stood there smiling; she threw back her head and gave a little, +light laugh. "I like a gentleman to be formal!" she declared. + +"I assure you it's a formal offer." + +"I was bound I would make you say something," Daisy went on. + +"You see, it's not very difficult," said Winterbourne. +"But I am afraid you are chaffing me." + +"I think not, sir," remarked Mrs. Miller very gently. + +"Do, then, let me give you a row," he said to the young girl. + +"It's quite lovely, the way you say that!" cried Daisy. + +"It will be still more lovely to do it." + +"Yes, it would be lovely!" said Daisy. But she made no movement +to accompany him; she only stood there laughing. + +"I should think you had better find out what time it is," +interposed her mother. + +"It is eleven o'clock, madam," said a voice, with a foreign accent, +out of the neighboring darkness; and Winterbourne, turning, perceived +the florid personage who was in attendance upon the two ladies. +He had apparently just approached. + +"Oh, Eugenio," said Daisy, "I am going out in a boat!" + +Eugenio bowed. "At eleven o'clock, mademoiselle?" + +"I am going with Mr. Winterbourne--this very minute." + +"Do tell her she can't," said Mrs. Miller to the courier. + +"I think you had better not go out in a boat, mademoiselle," Eugenio declared. + +Winterbourne wished to Heaven this pretty girl were not so familiar +with her courier; but he said nothing. + +"I suppose you don't think it's proper!" Daisy exclaimed. +"Eugenio doesn't think anything's proper." + +"I am at your service," said Winterbourne. + +"Does mademoiselle propose to go alone?" asked Eugenio of Mrs. Miller. + +"Oh, no; with this gentleman!" answered Daisy's mamma. + +The courier looked for a moment at Winterbourne--the latter +thought he was smiling--and then, solemnly, with a bow, +"As mademoiselle pleases!" he said. + +"Oh, I hoped you would make a fuss!" said Daisy. +"I don't care to go now." + +"I myself shall make a fuss if you don't go," said Winterbourne. + +"That's all I want--a little fuss!" And the young girl began +to laugh again. + +"Mr. Randolph has gone to bed!" the courier announced frigidly. + +"Oh, Daisy; now we can go!" said Mrs. Miller. + +Daisy turned away from Winterbourne, looking at him, +smiling and fanning herself. "Good night," she said; +"I hope you are disappointed, or disgusted, or something!" + +He looked at her, taking the hand she offered him. +"I am puzzled," he answered. + +"Well, I hope it won't keep you awake!" she said very smartly; +and, under the escort of the privileged Eugenio, the two ladies +passed toward the house. + +Winterbourne stood looking after them; he was indeed puzzled. +He lingered beside the lake for a quarter of an hour, turning over +the mystery of the young girl's sudden familiarities and caprices. +But the only very definite conclusion he came to was that he should +enjoy deucedly "going off" with her somewhere. + +Two days afterward he went off with her to the Castle of Chillon. +He waited for her in the large hall of the hotel, where the couriers, +the servants, the foreign tourists, were lounging about and staring. +It was not the place he should have chosen, but she had appointed it. +She came tripping downstairs, buttoning her long gloves, +squeezing her folded parasol against her pretty figure, +dressed in the perfection of a soberly elegant traveling costume. +Winterbourne was a man of imagination and, as our ancestors +used to say, sensibility; as he looked at her dress and, +on the great staircase, her little rapid, confiding step, +he felt as if there were something romantic going forward. +He could have believed he was going to elope with her. +He passed out with her among all the idle people that were +assembled there; they were all looking at her very hard; +she had begun to chatter as soon as she joined him. +Winterbourne's preference had been that they should be +conveyed to Chillon in a carriage; but she expressed a lively +wish to go in the little steamer; she declared that she had +a passion for steamboats. There was always such a lovely +breeze upon the water, and you saw such lots of people. +The sail was not long, but Winterbourne's companion found time +to say a great many things. To the young man himself their +little excursion was so much of an escapade--an adventure-- +that, even allowing for her habitual sense of freedom, +he had some expectation of seeing her regard it in the same way. +But it must be confessed that, in this particular, +he was disappointed. Daisy Miller was extremely animated, +she was in charming spirits; but she was apparently not at +all excited; she was not fluttered; she avoided neither his eyes +nor those of anyone else; she blushed neither when she looked +at him nor when she felt that people were looking at her. +People continued to look at her a great deal, and Winterbourne took +much satisfaction in his pretty companion's distinguished air. +He had been a little afraid that she would talk loud, laugh overmuch, +and even, perhaps, desire to move about the boat a good deal. +But he quite forgot his fears; he sat smiling, with his +eyes upon her face, while, without moving from her place, +she delivered herself of a great number of original reflections. +It was the most charming garrulity he had ever heard. +he had assented to the idea that she was "common"; but was she so, +after all, or was he simply getting used to her commonness? +Her conversation was chiefly of what metaphysicians term the +objective cast, but every now and then it took a subjective turn. + +"What on EARTH are you so grave about?" she suddenly demanded, +fixing her agreeable eyes upon Winterbourne's. + +"Am I grave?" he asked. "I had an idea I was grinning from ear to ear." + +"You look as if you were taking me to a funeral. If that's a grin, +your ears are very near together." + +"Should you like me to dance a hornpipe on the deck?" + +"Pray do, and I'll carry round your hat. It will pay the expenses +of our journey." + +"I never was better pleased in my life," murmured Winterbourne. + +She looked at him a moment and then burst into a little laugh. +"I like to make you say those things! You're a queer mixture!" + +In the castle, after they had landed, the subjective element +decidedly prevailed. Daisy tripped about the vaulted chambers, +rustled her skirts in the corkscrew staircases, flirted back with +a pretty little cry and a shudder from the edge of the oubliettes, +and turned a singularly well-shaped ear to everything that +Winterbourne told her about the place. But he saw that she +cared very little for feudal antiquities and that the dusky +traditions of Chillon made but a slight impression upon her. +They had the good fortune to have been able to walk about without +other companionship than that of the custodian; and Winterbourne +arranged with this functionary that they should not be hurried-- +that they should linger and pause wherever they chose. The custodian +interpreted the bargain generously--Winterbourne, on his side, +had been generous--and ended by leaving them quite to themselves. +Miss Miller's observations were not remarkable for logical consistency; +for anything she wanted to say she was sure to find a pretext. +She found a great many pretexts in the rugged embrasures of Chillon +for asking Winterbourne sudden questions about himself--his family, +his previous history, his tastes, his habits, his intentions--and for +supplying information upon corresponding points in her own personality. +Of her own tastes, habits, and intentions Miss Miller was prepared +to give the most definite, and indeed the most favorable account. + +"Well, I hope you know enough!" she said to her companion, +after he had told her the history of the unhappy Bonivard. +"I never saw a man that knew so much!" The history of Bonivard +had evidently, as they say, gone into one ear and out of the other. +But Daisy went on to say that she wished Winterbourne would travel +with them and "go round" with them; they might know something, +in that case. "Don't you want to come and teach Randolph?" she asked. +Winterbourne said that nothing could possibly please him so much, +but that he unfortunately other occupations. "Other occupations? +I don't believe it!" said Miss Daisy. "What do you mean? +You are not in business." The young man admitted that he was not +in business; but he had engagements which, even within a day or two, +would force him to go back to Geneva. "Oh, bother!" she said; +"I don't believe it!" and she began to talk about something else. +But a few moments later, when he was pointing out to her the pretty +design of an antique fireplace, she broke out irrelevantly, +"You don't mean to say you are going back to Geneva?" + +"It is a melancholy fact that I shall have to return to Geneva tomorrow." + +"Well, Mr. Winterbourne," said Daisy, "I think you're horrid!" + +"Oh, don't say such dreadful things!" said Winterbourne--"just +at the last!" + +"The last!" cried the young girl; "I call it the first. I have half +a mind to leave you here and go straight back to the hotel alone." +And for the next ten minutes she did nothing but call him horrid. +Poor Winterbourne was fairly bewildered; no young lady had as yet done +him the honor to be so agitated by the announcement of his movements. +His companion, after this, ceased to pay any attention to the +curiosities of Chillon or the beauties of the lake; she opened fire +upon the mysterious charmer in Geneva whom she appeared to have +instantly taken it for granted that he was hurrying back to see. +How did Miss Daisy Miller know that there was a charmer in Geneva? +Winterbourne, who denied the existence of such a person, +was quite unable to discover, and he was divided between amazement +at the rapidity of her induction and amusement at the frankness +of her persiflage. She seemed to him, in all this, +an extraordinary mixture of innocence and crudity. "Does she never +allow you more than three days at a time?" asked Daisy ironically. +"Doesn't she give you a vacation in summer? There's no one so hard +worked but they can get leave to go off somewhere at this season. +I suppose, if you stay another day, she'll come after you in the boat. +Do wait over till Friday, and I will go down to the landing to see +her arrive!" Winterbourne began to think he had been wrong to feel +disappointed in the temper in which the young lady had embarked. +If he had missed the personal accent, the personal accent was +now making its appearance. It sounded very distinctly, at last, +in her telling him she would stop "teasing" him if he would promise +her solemnly to come down to Rome in the winter. + +"That's not a difficult promise to make," said Winterbourne. +"My aunt has taken an apartment in Rome for the winter and has +already asked me to come and see her." + +"I don't want you to come for your aunt," said Daisy; "I want you +to come for me." And this was the only allusion that the young +man was ever to hear her make to his invidious kinswoman. +He declared that, at any rate, he would certainly come. +After this Daisy stopped teasing. Winterbourne took a carriage, +and they drove back to Vevey in the dusk; the young girl +was very quiet. + +In the evening Winterbourne mentioned to Mrs. Costello that he had spent +the afternoon at Chillon with Miss Daisy Miller. + +"The Americans--of the courier?" asked this lady. + +"Ah, happily," said Winterbourne, "the courier stayed at home." + +"She went with you all alone?" + +"All alone." + +Mrs. Costello sniffed a little at her smelling bottle. +"And that," she exclaimed, "is the young person whom you wanted +me to know!" + + + + + +PART II + + +Winterbourne, who had returned to Geneva the day after his +excursion to Chillon, went to Rome toward the end of January. +His aunt had been established there for several weeks, +and he had received a couple of letters from her. +"Those people you were so devoted to last summer at Vevey +have turned up here, courier and all," she wrote. +"They seem to have made several acquaintances, but the courier +continues to be the most intime. The young lady, however, +is also very intimate with some third-rate Italians, +with whom she rackets about in a way that makes much talk. +Bring me that pretty novel of Cherbuliez's--Paule Mere-- +and don't come later than the 23rd." + +In the natural course of events, Winterbourne, on arriving in Rome, +would presently have ascertained Mrs. Miller's address at the American +banker's and have gone to pay his compliments to Miss Daisy. +"After what happened at Vevey, I think I may certainly call upon them," +he said to Mrs. Costello. + +"If, after what happens--at Vevey and everywhere--you desire to keep up +the acquaintance, you are very welcome. Of course a man may know everyone. +Men are welcome to the privilege!" + +"Pray what is it that happens--here, for instance?" Winterbourne demanded. + +"The girl goes about alone with her foreigners. As to what +happens further, you must apply elsewhere for information. +She has picked up half a dozen of the regular Roman +fortune hunters, and she takes them about to people's houses. +When she comes to a party she brings with her a gentleman +with a good deal of manner and a wonderful mustache." + +"And where is the mother?" + +"I haven't the least idea. They are very dreadful people." + +Winterbourne meditated a moment. "They are very ignorant-- +very innocent only. Depend upon it they are not bad." + +"They are hopelessly vulgar," said Mrs. Costello. "Whether or no being +hopelessly vulgar is being 'bad' is a question for the metaphysicians. +They are bad enough to dislike, at any rate; and for this short life +that is quite enough." + +The news that Daisy Miller was surrounded by half a dozen wonderful +mustaches checked Winterbourne's impulse to go straightway to see her. +He had, perhaps, not definitely flattered himself that he had made +an ineffaceable impression upon her heart, but he was annoyed at hearing +of a state of affairs so little in harmony with an image that had lately +flitted in and out of his own meditations; the image of a very pretty +girl looking out of an old Roman window and asking herself urgently +when Mr. Winterbourne would arrive. If, however, he determined to wait +a little before reminding Miss Miller of his claims to her consideration, +he went very soon to call upon two or three other friends. +One of these friends was an American lady who had spent several +winters at Geneva, where she had placed her children at school. +She was a very accomplished woman, and she lived in the Via Gregoriana. +Winterbourne found her in a little crimson drawing room on a third floor; +the room was filled with southern sunshine. He had not been there ten minutes +when the servant came in, announcing "Madame Mila!" This announcement +was presently followed by the entrance of little Randolph Miller, +who stopped in the middle of the room and stood staring at Winterbourne. +An instant later his pretty sister crossed the threshold; and then, +after a considerable interval, Mrs. Miller slowly advanced. + +"I know you!" said Randolph. + +"I'm sure you know a great many things," exclaimed Winterbourne, +taking him by the hand. "How is your education coming on?" + +Daisy was exchanging greetings very prettily with her hostess, +but when she heard Winterbourne's voice she quickly turned her head. +"Well, I declare!" she said. + +"I told you I should come, you know," Winterbourne rejoined, smiling. + +"Well, I didn't believe it," said Miss Daisy. + +"I am much obliged to you," laughed the young man. + +"You might have come to see me!" said Daisy. + +"I arrived only yesterday." + +"I don't believe that!" the young girl declared. + +Winterbourne turned with a protesting smile to her mother, but this +lady evaded his glance, and, seating herself, fixed her eyes upon +her son. "We've got a bigger place than this," said Randolph. +"It's all gold on the walls." + +Mrs. Miller turned uneasily in her chair. "I told you if I were to bring you, +you would say something!" she murmured. + +"I told YOU!" Randolph exclaimed. "I tell YOU, sir!" +he added jocosely, giving Winterbourne a thump on the knee. +"It IS bigger, too!" + +Daisy had entered upon a lively conversation with her hostess; +Winterbourne judged it becoming to address a few words to her mother. +"I hope you have been well since we parted at Vevey," he said. + +Mrs. Miller now certainly looked at him--at his chin. +"Not very well, sir," she answered. + +"She's got the dyspepsia," said Randolph. "I've got it too. +Father's got it. I've got it most!" + +This announcement, instead of embarrassing Mrs. Miller, +seemed to relieve her. "I suffer from the liver," she said. +"I think it's this climate; it's less bracing than Schenectady, +especially in the winter season. I don't know whether you know +we reside at Schenectady. I was saying to Daisy that I certainly +hadn't found any one like Dr. Davis, and I didn't believe I should. +Oh, at Schenectady he stands first; they think everything of him. +He has so much to do, and yet there was nothing he wouldn't do for me. +He said he never saw anything like my dyspepsia, but he was +bound to cure it. I'm sure there was nothing he wouldn't try. +He was just going to try something new when we came off. +Mr. Miller wanted Daisy to see Europe for herself. But I wrote to +Mr. Miller that it seems as if I couldn't get on without Dr. Davis. +At Schenectady he stands at the very top; and there's a great deal +of sickness there, too. It affects my sleep." + +Winterbourne had a good deal of pathological gossip with Dr. Davis's patient, +during which Daisy chattered unremittingly to her own companion. +The young man asked Mrs. Miller how she was pleased with Rome. +"Well, I must say I am disappointed," she answered. "We had heard so much +about it; I suppose we had heard too much. But we couldn't help that. +We had been led to expect something different." + +"Ah, wait a little, and you will become very fond of it," said Winterbourne. + +"I hate it worse and worse every day!" cried Randolph. + +"You are like the infant Hannibal," said Winterbourne. + +"No, I ain't!" Randolph declared at a venture. + +"You are not much like an infant," said his mother. "But we have +seen places," she resumed, "that I should put a long way before Rome." +And in reply to Winterbourne's interrogation, "There's Zurich," +she concluded, "I think Zurich is lovely; and we hadn't heard half +so much about it." + +"The best place we've seen is the City of Richmond!" said Randolph. + +"He means the ship," his mother explained. "We crossed in that ship. +Randolph had a good time on the City of Richmond." + +"It's the best place I've seen," the child repeated. +"Only it was turned the wrong way." + +"Well, we've got to turn the right way some time," +said Mrs. Miller with a little laugh. Winterbourne expressed +the hope that her daughter at least found some gratification +in Rome, and she declared that Daisy was quite carried away. +"It's on account of the society--the society's splendid. +She goes round everywhere; she has made a great number +of acquaintances. Of course she goes round more than I do. +I must say they have been very sociable; they have taken +her right in. And then she knows a great many gentlemen. +Oh, she thinks there's nothing like Rome. Of course, +it's a great deal pleasanter for a young lady if she knows +plenty of gentlemen." + +By this time Daisy had turned her attention again to Winterbourne. +"I've been telling Mrs. Walker how mean you were!" the young girl announced. + +"And what is the evidence you have offered?" asked Winterbourne, +rather annoyed at Miss Miller's want of appreciation of the zeal of +an admirer who on his way down to Rome had stopped neither at Bologna +nor at Florence, simply because of a certain sentimental impatience. +He remembered that a cynical compatriot had once told him that +American women--the pretty ones, and this gave a largeness to the axiom-- +were at once the most exacting in the world and the least endowed +with a sense of indebtedness. + +"Why, you were awfully mean at Vevey," said Daisy. +"You wouldn't do anything. You wouldn't stay there when +I asked you." + +"My dearest young lady," cried Winterbourne, with eloquence, +"have I come all the way to Rome to encounter your reproaches?" + +"Just hear him say that!" said Daisy to her hostess, giving a twist to a bow +on this lady's dress. "Did you ever hear anything so quaint?" + +"So quaint, my dear?" murmured Mrs. Walker in the tone of a +partisan of Winterbourne. + +"Well, I don't know," said Daisy, fingering Mrs. Walker's ribbons. +"Mrs. Walker, I want to tell you something." + +"Mother-r," interposed Randolph, with his rough ends to his words, +"I tell you you've got to go. Eugenio'll raise--something!" + +"I'm not afraid of Eugenio," said Daisy with a toss of her head. +"Look here, Mrs. Walker," she went on, "you know I'm coming +to your party." + +"I am delighted to hear it." + +"I've got a lovely dress!" + +"I am very sure of that." + +"But I want to ask a favor--permission to bring a friend." + +"I shall be happy to see any of your friends," said Mrs. Walker, +turning with a smile to Mrs. Miller. + +"Oh, they are not my friends," answered Daisy's mamma, +smiling shyly in her own fashion. "I never spoke to them." + +"It's an intimate friend of mine--Mr. Giovanelli," said Daisy without a tremor +in her clear little voice or a shadow on her brilliant little face. + +Mrs. Walker was silent a moment; she gave a rapid glance at Winterbourne. +"I shall be glad to see Mr. Giovanelli," she then said. + +"He's an Italian," Daisy pursued with the prettiest serenity. +"He's a great friend of mine; he's the handsomest man in the world-- +except Mr. Winterbourne! He knows plenty of Italians, but he wants +to know some Americans. He thinks ever so much of Americans. +He's tremendously clever. He's perfectly lovely!" + +It was settled that this brilliant personage should be brought to +Mrs. Walker's party, and then Mrs. Miller prepared to take her leave. +"I guess we'll go back to the hotel," she said. + +"You may go back to the hotel, Mother, but I'm going to take +a walk," said Daisy. + +"She's going to walk with Mr. Giovanelli," Randolph proclaimed. + +"I am going to the Pincio," said Daisy, smiling. + +"Alone, my dear--at this hour?" Mrs. Walker asked. +The afternoon was drawing to a close--it was the hour for +the throng of carriages and of contemplative pedestrians. +"I don't think it's safe, my dear," said Mrs. Walker. + +"Neither do I," subjoined Mrs. Miller. "You'll get the fever, +as sure as you live. Remember what Dr. Davis told you!" + +"Give her some medicine before she goes," said Randolph. + +The company had risen to its feet; Daisy, still showing her pretty teeth, +bent over and kissed her hostess. "Mrs. Walker, you are too perfect," +she said. "I'm not going alone; I am going to meet a friend." + +"Your friend won't keep you from getting the fever," +Mrs. Miller observed. + +"Is it Mr. Giovanelli?" asked the hostess. + +Winterbourne was watching the young girl; at this question his +attention quickened. She stood there, smiling and smoothing +her bonnet ribbons; she glanced at Winterbourne. Then, while she +glanced and smiled, she answered, without a shade of hesitation, +"Mr. Giovanelli--the beautiful Giovanelli." + +"My dear young friend," said Mrs. Walker, taking her hand pleadingly, +"don't walk off to the Pincio at this hour to meet a beautiful Italian." + +"Well, he speaks English," said Mrs. Miller. + +"Gracious me!" Daisy exclaimed, "I don't to do anything improper. +There's an easy way to settle it." She continued to glance at Winterbourne. +"The Pincio is only a hundred yards distant; and if Mr. Winterbourne +were as polite as he pretends, he would offer to walk with me!" + +Winterbourne's politeness hastened to affirm itself, +and the young girl gave him gracious leave to accompany her. +They passed downstairs before her mother, and at the door Winterbourne +perceived Mrs. Miller's carriage drawn up, with the ornamental +courier whose acquaintance he had made at Vevey seated within. +"Goodbye, Eugenio!" cried Daisy; "I'm going to take a walk." +The distance from the Via Gregoriana to the beautiful +garden at the other end of the Pincian Hill is, in fact, +rapidly traversed. As the day was splendid, however, and the +concourse of vehicles, walkers, and loungers numerous, +the young Americans found their progress much delayed. +This fact was highly agreeable to Winterbourne, in spite of his +consciousness of his singular situation. The slow-moving, idly +gazing Roman crowd bestowed much attention upon the extremely +pretty young foreign lady who was passing through it upon his arm; +and he wondered what on earth had been in Daisy's mind when she +proposed to expose herself, unattended, to its appreciation. +His own mission, to her sense, apparently, was to consign +her to the hands of Mr. Giovanelli; but Winterbourne, at once +annoyed and gratified, resolved that he would do no such thing. + +"Why haven't you been to see me?" asked Daisy. "You can't +get out of that." + +"I have had the honor of telling you that I have only just stepped +out of the train." + +"You must have stayed in the train a good while after it stopped!" +cried the young girl with her little laugh. "I suppose you were asleep. +You have had time to go to see Mrs. Walker." + +"I knew Mrs. Walker--" Winterbourne began to explain. + +"I know where you knew her. You knew her at Geneva. +She told me so. Well, you knew me at Vevey. That's just as good. +So you ought to have come." She asked him no other question +than this; she began to prattle about her own affairs. +"We've got splendid rooms at the hotel; Eugenio says they're +the best rooms in Rome. We are going to stay all winter, +if we don't die of the fever; and I guess we'll stay then. +It's a great deal nicer than I thought; I thought it would +be fearfully quiet; I was sure it would be awfully poky. +I was sure we should be going round all the time with one of those +dreadful old men that explain about the pictures and things. +But we only had about a week of that, and now I'm enjoying myself. +I know ever so many people, and they are all so charming. +The society's extremely select. There are all kinds--English, +and Germans, and Italians. I think I like the English best. +I like their style of conversation. But there are some +lovely Americans. I never saw anything so hospitable. +There's something or other every day. There's not much dancing; +but I must say I never thought dancing was everything. +I was always fond of conversation. I guess I shall +have plenty at Mrs. Walker's, her rooms are so small." +When they had passed the gate of the Pincian Gardens, +Miss Miller began to wonder where Mr. Giovanelli might be. +"We had better go straight to that place in front," she said, +"where you look at the view." + +"I certainly shall not help you to find him," Winterbourne declared. + +"Then I shall find him without you," cried Miss Daisy. + +"You certainly won't leave me!" cried Winterbourne. + +She burst into her little laugh. "Are you afraid you'll get lost-- +or run over? But there's Giovanelli, leaning against that tree. +He's staring at the women in the carriages: did you ever see +anything so cool?" + +Winterbourne perceived at some distance a little man standing with +folded arms nursing his cane. He had a handsome face, an artfully +poised hat, a glass in one eye, and a nosegay in his buttonhole. +Winterbourne looked at him a moment and then said, "Do you mean +to speak to that man?" + +"Do I mean to speak to him? Why, you don't suppose I mean +to communicate by signs?" + +"Pray understand, then," said Winterbourne, "that I intend +to remain with you." + +Daisy stopped and looked at him, without a sign of troubled +consciousness in her face, with nothing but the presence of her +charming eyes and her happy dimples. "Well, she's a cool one!" +thought the young man. + +"I don't like the way you say that," said Daisy. +"It's too imperious." + +"I beg your pardon if I say it wrong. The main point is to give +you an idea of my meaning." + +The young girl looked at him more gravely, but with eyes that were +prettier than ever. "I have never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me, +or to interfere with anything I do." + +"I think you have made a mistake," said Winterbourne. +"You should sometimes listen to a gentleman--the right one." + +Daisy began to laugh again. "I do nothing but listen to gentlemen!" +she exclaimed. "Tell me if Mr. Giovanelli is the right one?" + +The gentleman with the nosegay in his bosom had now perceived our two friends, +and was approaching the young girl with obsequious rapidity. He bowed to +Winterbourne as well as to the latter's companion; he had a brilliant smile, +an intelligent eye; Winterbourne thought him not a bad-looking fellow. +But he nevertheless said to Daisy, "No, he's not the right one." + +Daisy evidently had a natural talent for performing introductions; +she mentioned the name of each of her companions to the other. +She strolled alone with one of them on each side of her; Mr. Giovanelli, +who spoke English very cleverly--Winterbourne afterward learned +that he had practiced the idiom upon a great many American heiresses-- +addressed her a great deal of very polite nonsense; he was extremely +urbane, and the young American, who said nothing, reflected upon +that profundity of Italian cleverness which enables people to appear +more gracious in proportion as they are more acutely disappointed. +Giovanelli, of course, had counted upon something more intimate; +he had not bargained for a party of three. But he kept his +temper in a manner which suggested far-stretching intentions. +Winterbourne flattered himself that he had taken his measure. +"He is not a gentleman," said the young American; +"he is only a clever imitation of one. He is a music master, +or a penny-a-liner, or a third-rate artist. D__n his good looks!" +Mr. Giovanelli had certainly a very pretty face; but Winterbourne felt +a superior indignation at his own lovely fellow countrywoman's not +knowing the difference between a spurious gentleman and a real one. +Giovanelli chattered and jested and made himself wonderfully agreeable. +It was true that, if he was an imitation, the imitation was brilliant. +"Nevertheless," Winterbourne said to himself, "a nice girl ought to know!" +And then he came back to the question whether this was, in fact, +a nice girl. Would a nice girl, even allowing for her being a little +American flirt, make a rendezvous with a presumably low-lived foreigner? +The rendezvous in this case, indeed, had been in broad daylight and in +the most crowded corner of Rome, but was it not impossible to regard +the choice of these circumstances as a proof of extreme cynicism? +Singular though it may seem, Winterbourne was vexed that the young girl, +in joining her amoroso, should not appear more impatient +of his own company, and he was vexed because of his inclination. +It was impossible to regard her as a perfectly well-conducted +young lady; she was wanting in a certain indispensable delicacy. +It would therefore simplify matters greatly to be able to treat +her as the object of one of those sentiments which are called by +romancers "lawless passions." That she should seem to wish to get rid +of him would help him to think more lightly of her, and to be able +to think more lightly of her would make her much less perplexing. +But Daisy, on this occasion, continued to present herself as an +inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence. + +She had been walking some quarter of an hour, attended by her +two cavaliers, and responding in a tone of very childish gaiety, +as it seemed to Winterbourne, to the pretty speeches +of Mr. Giovanelli, when a carriage that had detached +itself from the revolving train drew up beside the path. +At the same moment Winterbourne perceived that his friend +Mrs. Walker--the lady whose house he had lately left-- +was seated in the vehicle and was beckoning to him. +Leaving Miss Miller's side, he hastened to obey her summons. +Mrs. Walker was flushed; she wore an excited air. +"It is really too dreadful," she said. "That girl must not do +this sort of thing. She must not walk here with you two men. +Fifty people have noticed her." + +Winterbourne raised his eyebrows. "I think it's a pity to make +too much fuss about it." + +"It's a pity to let the girl ruin herself!" + +"She is very innocent," said Winterbourne. + +"She's very crazy!" cried Mrs. Walker. "Did you ever see +anything so imbecile as her mother? After you had all left +me just now, I could not sit still for thinking of it. +It seemed too pitiful, not even to attempt to save her. +I ordered the carriage and put on my bonnet, and came here +as quickly as possible. Thank Heaven I have found you!" + +"What do you propose to do with us?" asked Winterbourne, smiling. + +"To ask her to get in, to drive her about here for half an hour, +so that the world may see she is not running absolutely wild, +and then to take her safely home." + +"I don't think it's a very happy thought," said Winterbourne; +"but you can try." + +Mrs. Walker tried. The young man went in pursuit of Miss Miller, +who had simply nodded and smiled at his interlocutor in the carriage +and had gone her way with her companion. Daisy, on learning +that Mrs. Walker wished to speak to her, retraced her steps +with a perfect good grace and with Mr. Giovanelli at her side. +She declared that she was delighted to have a chance to present this +gentleman to Mrs. Walker. She immediately achieved the introduction, +and declared that she had never in her life seen anything so lovely +as Mrs. Walker's carriage rug. + +"I am glad you admire it," said this lady, smiling sweetly. +"Will you get in and let me put it over you?" + +"Oh, no, thank you," said Daisy. "I shall admire it much more as I see you +driving round with it." + +"Do get in and drive with me!" said Mrs. Walker. + +"That would be charming, but it's so enchanting just as I am!" +and Daisy gave a brilliant glance at the gentlemen on either +side of her. + +"It may be enchanting, dear child, but it is not the custom here," +urged Mrs. Walker, leaning forward in her victoria, with her +hands devoutly clasped. + +"Well, it ought to be, then!" said Daisy. "If I didn't walk +I should expire." + +"You should walk with your mother, dear," cried the lady +from Geneva, losing patience. + +"With my mother dear!" exclaimed the young girl. Winterbourne saw that she +scented interference. "My mother never walked ten steps in her life. +And then, you know," she added with a laugh, "I am more than five years old." + +"You are old enough to be more reasonable. You are old enough, +dear Miss Miller, to be talked about." + +Daisy looked at Mrs. Walker, smiling intensely. "Talked about? +What do you mean?" + +"Come into my carriage, and I will tell you." + +Daisy turned her quickened glance again from one of the gentlemen beside her +to the other. Mr. Giovanelli was bowing to and fro, rubbing down his gloves +and laughing very agreeably; Winterbourne thought it a most unpleasant scene. +"I don't think I want to know what you mean," said Daisy presently. +"I don't think I should like it." + +Winterbourne wished that Mrs. Walker would tuck in her carriage rug and drive +away, but this lady did not enjoy being defied, as she afterward told him. +"Should you prefer being thought a very reckless girl?" she demanded. + +"Gracious!" exclaimed Daisy. She looked again at Mr. Giovanelli, +then she turned to Winterbourne. There was a little pink flush in +her cheek; she was tremendously pretty. "Does Mr. Winterbourne think," +she asked slowly, smiling, throwing back her head, and glancing +at him from head to foot, "that, to save my reputation, I ought +to get into the carriage?" + +Winterbourne colored; for an instant he hesitated greatly. +It seemed so strange to hear her speak that way of her "reputation." +But he himself, in fact, must speak in accordance with gallantry. +The finest gallantry, here, was simply to tell her the truth; +and the truth, for Winterbourne, as the few indications I +have been able to give have made him known to the reader, +was that Daisy Miller should take Mrs. Walker's advice. +He looked at her exquisite prettiness, and then he said, +very gently, "I think you should get into the carriage." + +Daisy gave a violent laugh. "I never heard anything so stiff! +If this is improper, Mrs. Walker," she pursued, "then I am all improper, +and you must give me up. Goodbye; I hope you'll have a lovely ride!" +and, with Mr. Giovanelli, who made a triumphantly obsequious salute, +she turned away. + +Mrs. Walker sat looking after her, and there were tears in +Mrs. Walker's eyes. "Get in here, sir," she said to Winterbourne, +indicating the place beside her. The young man answered that he felt +bound to accompany Miss Miller, whereupon Mrs. Walker declared that +if he refused her this favor she would never speak to him again. +She was evidently in earnest. Winterbourne overtook Daisy and +her companion, and, offering the young girl his hand, told her +that Mrs. Walker had made an imperious claim upon his society. +He expected that in answer she would say something rather free, +something to commit herself still further to that "recklessness" +from which Mrs. Walker had so charitably endeavored to dissuade her. +But she only shook his hand, hardly looking at him, while Mr. Giovanelli +bade him farewell with a too emphatic flourish of the hat. + +Winterbourne was not in the best possible humor as he took his seat in +Mrs. Walker's victoria. "That was not clever of you," he said candidly, +while the vehicle mingled again with the throng of carriages. + +"In such a case," his companion answered, "I don't wish to be clever; +I wish to be EARNEST!" + +"Well, your earnestness has only offended her and put her off." + +"It has happened very well," said Mrs. Walker. "If she is so perfectly +determined to compromise herself, the sooner one knows it the better; +one can act accordingly." + +"I suspect she meant no harm," Winterbourne rejoined. + +"So I thought a month ago. But she has been going too far." + +"What has she been doing?" + +"Everything that is not done here. Flirting with any man she could pick up; +sitting in corners with mysterious Italians; dancing all the evening +with the same partners; receiving visits at eleven o'clock at night. +Her mother goes away when visitors come." + +"But her brother," said Winterbourne, laughing, "sits up till midnight." + +"He must be edified by what he sees. I'm told that at their hotel +everyone is talking about her, and that a smile goes round among +all the servants when a gentleman comes and asks for Miss Miller." + +"The servants be hanged!" said Winterbourne angrily. +"The poor girl's only fault," he presently added, "is that she +is very uncultivated." + +"She is naturally indelicate," Mrs. Walker declared. + +"Take that example this morning. How long had you known her at Vevey?" + +"A couple of days." + +"Fancy, then, her making it a personal matter that you should have +left the place!" + +Winterbourne was silent for some moments; then he said, "I suspect, +Mrs. Walker, that you and I have lived too long at Geneva!" +And he added a request that she should inform him with what particular +design she had made him enter her carriage. + +"I wished to beg you to cease your relations with Miss Miller-- +not to flirt with her--to give her no further opportunity +to expose herself--to let her alone, in short." + +"I'm afraid I can't do that," said Winterbourne. +"I like her extremely." + +"All the more reason that you shouldn't help her to make a scandal." + +"There shall be nothing scandalous in my attentions to her." + +"There certainly will be in the way she takes them. +But I have said what I had on my conscience," Mrs. Walker pursued. +"If you wish to rejoin the young lady I will put you down. +Here, by the way, you have a chance." + +The carriage was traversing that part of the Pincian +Garden that overhangs the wall of Rome and overlooks +the beautiful Villa Borghese. It is bordered by a +large parapet, near which there are several seats. +One of the seats at a distance was occupied by a gentleman +and a lady, toward whom Mrs. Walker gave a toss of her head. +At the same moment these persons rose and walked toward +the parapet. Winterbourne had asked the coachman to stop; +he now descended from the carriage. His companion looked +at him a moment in silence; then, while he raised his hat, +she drove majestically away. Winterbourne stood there; +he had turned his eyes toward Daisy and her cavalier. +They evidently saw no one; they were too deeply occupied +with each other. When they reached the low garden wall, +they stood a moment looking off at the great flat-topped +pine clusters of the Villa Borghese; then Giovanelli +seated himself, familiarly, upon the broad ledge of the wall. +The western sun in the opposite sky sent out a brilliant +shaft through a couple of cloud bars, whereupon Daisy's +companion took her parasol out of her hands and opened it. +She came a little nearer, and he held the parasol over her; +then, still holding it, he let it rest upon her shoulder, +so that both of their heads were hidden from Winterbourne. +This young man lingered a moment, then he began to walk. +But he walked--not toward the couple with the parasol; +toward the residence of his aunt, Mrs. Costello. + +He flattered himself on the following day that there was no smiling +among the servants when he, at least, asked for Mrs. Miller at +her hotel. This lady and her daughter, however, were not at home; +and on the next day after, repeating his visit, Winterbourne again +had the misfortune not to find them. Mrs. Walker's party took place +on the evening of the third day, and, in spite of the frigidity of his +last interview with the hostess, Winterbourne was among the guests. +Mrs. Walker was one of those American ladies who, while residing abroad, +make a point, in their own phrase, of studying European society, +and she had on this occasion collected several specimens of her +diversely born fellow mortals to serve, as it were, as textbooks. +When Winterbourne arrived, Daisy Miller was not there, but in a few +moments he saw her mother come in alone, very shyly and ruefully. +Mrs. Miller's hair above her exposed-looking temples was more frizzled +than ever. As she approached Mrs. Walker, Winterbourne also drew near. + +"You see, I've come all alone," said poor Mrs. Miller. +"I'm so frightened; I don't know what to do. It's the first time +I've ever been to a party alone, especially in this country. +I wanted to bring Randolph or Eugenio, or someone, but Daisy just +pushed me off by myself. I ain't used to going round alone." + +"And does not your daughter intend to favor us with her society?" +demanded Mrs. Walker impressively. + +"Well, Daisy's all dressed," said Mrs. Miller with that accent of +the dispassionate, if not of the philosophic, historian with which she +always recorded the current incidents of her daughter's career. +"She got dressed on purpose before dinner. But she's got a friend +of hers there; that gentleman--the Italian--that she wanted to bring. +They've got going at the piano; it seems as if they couldn't leave off. +Mr. Giovanelli sings splendidly. But I guess they'll come before very long," +concluded Mrs. Miller hopefully. + +"I'm sorry she should come in that way," said Mrs. Walker. + +"Well, I told her that there was no use in her getting dressed before +dinner if she was going to wait three hours," responded Daisy's mamma. +"I didn't see the use of her putting on such a dress as that to sit +round with Mr. Giovanelli." + +"This is most horrible!" said Mrs. Walker, turning away and +addressing herself to Winterbourne. "Elle s'affiche. It's +her revenge for my having ventured to remonstrate with her. +When she comes, I shall not speak to her." + +Daisy came after eleven o'clock; but she was not, +on such an occasion, a young lady to wait to be spoken to. +She rustled forward in radiant loveliness, smiling and chattering, +carrying a large bouquet, and attended by Mr. Giovanelli. +Everyone stopped talking and turned and looked at her. +She came straight to Mrs. Walker. "I'm afraid you thought +I never was coming, so I sent mother off to tell you. +I wanted to make Mr. Giovanelli practice some things before he came; +you know he sings beautifully, and I want you to ask him to sing. +This is Mr. Giovanelli; you know I introduced him to you; +he's got the most lovely voice, and he knows the most charming +set of songs. I made him go over them this evening on purpose; +we had the greatest time at the hotel." Of all this Daisy delivered +herself with the sweetest, brightest audibleness, looking now +at her hostess and now round the room, while she gave a series +of little pats, round her shoulders, to the edges of her dress. +"Is there anyone I know?" she asked. + +"I think every one knows you!" said Mrs. Walker pregnantly, and she +gave a very cursory greeting to Mr. Giovanelli. This gentleman bore +himself gallantly. He smiled and bowed and showed his white teeth; +he curled his mustaches and rolled his eyes and performed all +the proper functions of a handsome Italian at an evening party. +He sang very prettily half a dozen songs, though Mrs. Walker afterward +declared that she had been quite unable to find out who asked him. +It was apparently not Daisy who had given him his orders. +Daisy sat at a distance from the piano, and though she had publicly, +as it were, professed a high admiration for his singing, talked, +not inaudibly, while it was going on. + +"It's a pity these rooms are so small; we can't dance," she said +to Winterbourne, as if she had seen him five minutes before. + +"I am not sorry we can't dance," Winterbourne answered; +"I don't dance." + +"Of course you don't dance; you're too stiff," said Miss Daisy. +"I hope you enjoyed your drive with Mrs. Walker!" + +"No. I didn't enjoy it; I preferred walking with you." + +"We paired off: that was much better," said Daisy. +"But did you ever hear anything so cool as Mrs. Walker's +wanting me to get into her carriage and drop poor +Mr. Giovanelli, and under the pretext that it was proper? +People have different ideas! It would have been most unkind; +he had been talking about that walk for ten days." + +"He should not have talked about it at all," said Winterbourne; +"he would never have proposed to a young lady of this country +to walk about the streets with him." + +"About the streets?" cried Daisy with her pretty stare. +"Where, then, would he have proposed to her to walk? +The Pincio is not the streets, either; and I, thank goodness, +am not a young lady of this country. The young ladies of this +country have a dreadfully poky time of it, so far as I can learn; +I don't see why I should change my habits for THEM." + +"I am afraid your habits are those of a flirt," said Winterbourne gravely. + +"Of course they are," she cried, giving him her little smiling stare again. +"I'm a fearful, frightful flirt! Did you ever hear of a nice girl that +was not? But I suppose you will tell me now that I am not a nice girl." + +"You're a very nice girl; but I wish you would flirt with me, +and me only," said Winterbourne. + +"Ah! thank you--thank you very much; you are the last man I should +think of flirting with. As I have had the pleasure of informing you, +you are too stiff." + +"You say that too often," said Winterbourne. + +Daisy gave a delighted laugh. "If I could have the sweet hope of making +you angry, I should say it again." + +"Don't do that; when I am angry I'm stiffer than ever. +But if you won't flirt with me, do cease, at least, to flirt +with your friend at the piano; they don't understand that sort +of thing here." + +"I thought they understood nothing else!" exclaimed Daisy. + +"Not in young unmarried women." + +"It seems to me much more proper in young unmarried women than in old +married ones," Daisy declared. + +"Well," said Winterbourne, "when you deal with natives you must go +by the custom of the place. Flirting is a purely American custom; +it doesn't exist here. So when you show yourself in public with +Mr. Giovanelli, and without your mother--" + +"Gracious! poor Mother!" interposed Daisy. + +"Though you may be flirting, Mr. Giovanelli is not; +he means something else." + +"He isn't preaching, at any rate," said Daisy with vivacity. +"And if you want very much to know, we are neither of us flirting; +we are too good friends for that: we are very intimate friends." + +"Ah!" rejoined Winterbourne, "if you are in love with each other, +it is another affair." + +She had allowed him up to this point to talk so frankly that +he had no expectation of shocking her by this ejaculation; +but she immediately got up, blushing visibly, and leaving +him to exclaim mentally that little American flirts were +the queerest creatures in the world. "Mr. Giovanelli, +at least," she said, giving her interlocutor a single glance, +"never says such very disagreeable things to me." + +Winterbourne was bewildered; he stood, staring. Mr. Giovanelli +had finished singing. He left the piano and came over to Daisy. +"Won't you come into the other room and have some tea?" he asked, +bending before her with his ornamental smile. + +Daisy turned to Winterbourne, beginning to smile again. He was still +more perplexed, for this inconsequent smile made nothing clear, +though it seemed to prove, indeed, that she had a sweetness and +softness that reverted instinctively to the pardon of offenses. +"It has never occurred to Mr. Winterbourne to offer me any tea," +she said with her little tormenting manner. + +"I have offered you advice," Winterbourne rejoined. + +"I prefer weak tea!" cried Daisy, and she went off with the +brilliant Giovanelli. She sat with him in the adjoining room, +in the embrasure of the window, for the rest of the evening. +There was an interesting performance at the piano, but neither +of these young people gave heed to it. When Daisy came to take +leave of Mrs. Walker, this lady conscientiously repaired +the weakness of which she had been guilty at the moment of +the young girl's arrival. She turned her back straight upon +Miss Miller and left her to depart with what grace she might. +Winterbourne was standing near the door; he saw it all. +Daisy turned very pale and looked at her mother, but Mrs. Miller +was humbly unconscious of any violation of the usual social forms. +She appeared, indeed, to have felt an incongruous impulse +to draw attention to her own striking observance of them. +"Good night, Mrs. Walker," she said; "we've had a beautiful evening. +You see, if I let Daisy come to parties without me, +I don't want her to go away without me." Daisy turned away, +looking with a pale, grave face at the circle near the door; +Winterbourne saw that, for the first moment, she was +too much shocked and puzzled even for indignation. +He on his side was greatly touched. + +"That was very cruel," he said to Mrs. Walker. + +"She never enters my drawing room again!" replied his hostess. + +Since Winterbourne was not to meet her in Mrs. Walker's drawing room, +he went as often as possible to Mrs. Miller's hotel. The ladies +were rarely at home, but when he found them, the devoted Giovanelli +was always present. Very often the brilliant little Roman was in the +drawing room with Daisy alone, Mrs. Miller being apparently constantly +of the opinion that discretion is the better part of surveillance. +Winterbourne noted, at first with surprise, that Daisy on these +occasions was never embarrassed or annoyed by his own entrance; +but he very presently began to feel that she had no more surprises for him; +the unexpected in her behavior was the only thing to expect. She showed +no displeasure at her tete-a-tete with Giovanelli being interrupted; +she could chatter as freshly and freely with two gentlemen as with one; +there was always, in her conversation, the same odd mixture of audacity +and puerility. Winterbourne remarked to himself that if she was +seriously interested in Giovanelli, it was very singular that she should +not take more trouble to preserve the sanctity of their interviews; +and he liked her the more for her innocent-looking indifference +and her apparently inexhaustible good humor. He could hardly have +said why, but she seemed to him a girl who would never be jealous. +At the risk of exciting a somewhat derisive smile on the reader's part, +I may affirm that with regard to the women who had hitherto interested him, +it very often seemed to Winterbourne among the possibilities that, given +certain contingencies, he should be afraid--literally afraid--of these ladies; +he had a pleasant sense that he should never be afraid of Daisy Miller. +It must be added that this sentiment was not altogether flattering to Daisy; +it was part of his conviction, or rather of his apprehension, that she +would prove a very light young person. + +But she was evidently very much interested in Giovanelli. +She looked at him whenever he spoke; she was perpetually telling him +to do this and to do that; she was constantly "chaffing" and abusing him. +She appeared completely to have forgotten that Winterbourne had said anything +to displease her at Mrs. Walker's little party. One Sunday afternoon, +having gone to St. Peter's with his aunt, Winterbourne perceived Daisy +strolling about the great church in company with the inevitable Giovanelli. +Presently he pointed out the young girl and her cavalier to Mrs. Costello. +This lady looked at them a moment through her eyeglass, and then she said: + +"That's what makes you so pensive in these days, eh?" + +"I had not the least idea I was pensive," said the young man. + +"You are very much preoccupied; you are thinking of something." + +"And what is it," he asked, "that you accuse me of thinking of?" + +"Of that young lady's--Miss Baker's, Miss Chandler's--what's her name?-- +Miss Miller's intrigue with that little barber's block." + +"Do you call it an intrigue," Winterbourne asked--"an affair that goes +on with such peculiar publicity?" + +"That's their folly," said Mrs. Costello; "it's not their merit." + +"No," rejoined Winterbourne, with something of that pensiveness +to which his aunt had alluded. "I don't believe that there +is anything to be called an intrigue." + +"I have heard a dozen people speak of it; they say she is quite carried +away by him." + +"They are certainly very intimate," said Winterbourne. + +Mrs. Costello inspected the young couple again with her optical instrument. +"He is very handsome. One easily sees how it is. She thinks +him the most elegant man in the world, the finest gentleman. +She has never seen anything like him; he is better, even, than the courier. +It was the courier probably who introduced him; and if he succeeds in marrying +the young lady, the courier will come in for a magnificent commission." + +"I don't believe she thinks of marrying him," said Winterbourne, +"and I don't believe he hopes to marry her." + +"You may be very sure she thinks of nothing. She goes on from +day to day, from hour to hour, as they did in the Golden Age. +I can imagine nothing more vulgar. And at the same time," +added Mrs. Costello, "depend upon it that she may tell you +any moment that she is 'engaged.'" + +"I think that is more than Giovanelli expects," said Winterbourne. + +"Who is Giovanelli?" + +"The little Italian. I have asked questions about him and +learned something. He is apparently a perfectly respectable +little man. I believe he is, in a small way, a cavaliere +avvocato. But he doesn't move in what are called the first circles. +I think it is really not absolutely impossible that the courier +introduced him. He is evidently immensely charmed with Miss Miller. +If she thinks him the finest gentleman in the world, he, on his side, +has never found himself in personal contact with such splendor, +such opulence, such expensiveness as this young lady's. And +then she must seem to him wonderfully pretty and interesting. +I rather doubt that he dreams of marrying her. +That must appear to him too impossible a piece of luck. +He has nothing but his handsome face to offer, and there is +a substantial Mr. Miller in that mysterious land of dollars. +Giovanelli knows that he hasn't a title to offer. +If he were only a count or a marchese! He must wonder +at his luck, at the way they have taken him up." + +"He accounts for it by his handsome face and thinks Miss +Miller a young lady qui se passe ses fantaisies!" +said Mrs. Costello. + +"It is very true," Winterbourne pursued, "that Daisy and her mamma +have not yet risen to that stage of--what shall I call it?--of culture +at which the idea of catching a count or a marchese begins. +I believe that they are intellectually incapable of that conception." + +"Ah! but the avvocato can't believe it," said Mrs. Costello. + +Of the observation excited by Daisy's "intrigue," Winterbourne +gathered that day at St. Peter's sufficient evidence. A dozen +of the American colonists in Rome came to talk with Mrs. Costello, +who sat on a little portable stool at the base of one of the +great pilasters. The vesper service was going forward in splendid +chants and organ tones in the adjacent choir, and meanwhile, +between Mrs. Costello and her friends, there was a great deal +said about poor little Miss Miller's going really "too far." +Winterbourne was not pleased with what he heard, but when, +coming out upon the great steps of the church, he saw Daisy, +who had emerged before him, get into an open cab with her +accomplice and roll away through the cynical streets of Rome, +he could not deny to himself that she was going very far indeed. +He felt very sorry for her--not exactly that he believed that +she had completely lost her head, but because it was painful +to hear so much that was pretty, and undefended, and natural +assigned to a vulgar place among the categories of disorder. +He made an attempt after this to give a hint to Mrs. Miller. +He met one day in the Corso a friend, a tourist like himself, +who had just come out of the Doria Palace, where he had been +walking through the beautiful gallery. His friend talked +for a moment about the superb portrait of Innocent X by +Velasquez which hangs in one of the cabinets of the palace, +and then said, "And in the same cabinet, by the way, I had +the pleasure of contemplating a picture of a different kind-- +that pretty American girl whom you pointed out to me last week." +In answer to Winterbourne's inquiries, his friend narrated +that the pretty American girl--prettier than ever--was seated +with a companion in the secluded nook in which the great papal +portrait was enshrined. + +"Who was her companion?" asked Winterbourne. + +"A little Italian with a bouquet in his buttonhole. +The girl is delightfully pretty, but I thought I understood from you +the other day that she was a young lady du meilleur monde." + +"So she is!" answered Winterbourne; and having assured himself that his +informant had seen Daisy and her companion but five minutes before, +he jumped into a cab and went to call on Mrs. Miller. She was at home; +but she apologized to him for receiving him in Daisy's absence. + +"She's gone out somewhere with Mr. Giovanelli," said Mrs. Miller. +"She's always going round with Mr. Giovanelli." + +"I have noticed that they are very intimate," Winterbourne observed. + +"Oh, it seems as if they couldn't live without each other!" said Mrs. Miller. +"Well, he's a real gentleman, anyhow. I keep telling Daisy she's engaged!" + +"And what does Daisy say?" + +"Oh, she says she isn't engaged. But she might as well be!" +this impartial parent resumed; "she goes on as if she was. +But I've made Mr. Giovanelli promise to tell me, if SHE doesn't. +I should want to write to Mr. Miller about it--shouldn't you?" + +Winterbourne replied that he certainly should; and the state of mind +of Daisy's mamma struck him as so unprecedented in the annals of parental +vigilance that he gave up as utterly irrelevant the attempt to place +her upon her guard. + +After this Daisy was never at home, and Winterbourne ceased to meet her +at the houses of their common acquaintances, because, as he perceived, +these shrewd people had quite made up their minds that she was going too far. +They ceased to invite her; and they intimated that they desired to +express to observant Europeans the great truth that, though Miss Daisy +Miller was a young American lady, her behavior was not representative-- +was regarded by her compatriots as abnormal. Winterbourne wondered +how she felt about all the cold shoulders that were turned toward her, +and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that she did not feel at all. +He said to himself that she was too light and childish, too uncultivated +and unreasoning, too provincial, to have reflected upon her ostracism, +or even to have perceived it. Then at other moments he believed that she +carried about in her elegant and irresponsible little organism a defiant, +passionate, perfectly observant consciousness of the impression she produced. +He asked himself whether Daisy's defiance came from the consciousness +of innocence, or from her being, essentially, a young person of the +reckless class. It must be admitted that holding one's self to a belief +in Daisy's "innocence" came to seem to Winterbourne more and more a matter +of fine-spun gallantry. As I have already had occasion to relate, he was +angry at finding himself reduced to chopping logic about this young lady; +he was vexed at his want of instinctive certitude as to how far her +eccentricities were generic, national, and how far they were personal. +From either view of them he had somehow missed her, and now it was too late. +She was "carried away" by Mr. Giovanelli. + +A few days after his brief interview with her mother, he encountered +her in that beautiful abode of flowering desolation known as the +Palace of the Caesars. The early Roman spring had filled the air +with bloom and perfume, and the rugged surface of the Palatine +was muffled with tender verdure. Daisy was strolling along +the top of one of those great mounds of ruin that are embanked +with mossy marble and paved with monumental inscriptions. +It seemed to him that Rome had never been so lovely as just then. +He stood, looking off at the enchanting harmony of line and color +that remotely encircles the city, inhaling the softly humid odors, +and feeling the freshness of the year and the antiquity +of the place reaffirm themselves in mysterious interfusion. +It seemed to him also that Daisy had never looked so pretty, +but this had been an observation of his whenever he met her. +Giovanelli was at her side, and Giovanelli, too, wore an aspect +of even unwonted brilliancy. + +"Well," said Daisy, "I should think you would be lonesome!" + +"Lonesome?" asked Winterbourne. + +"You are always going round by yourself. Can't you get anyone +to walk with you?" + +"I am not so fortunate," said Winterbourne, "as your companion." + +Giovanelli, from the first, had treated Winterbourne with +distinguished politeness. He listened with a deferential air +to his remarks; he laughed punctiliously at his pleasantries; +he seemed disposed to testify to his belief that Winterbourne +was a superior young man. He carried himself in no degree +like a jealous wooer; he had obviously a great deal of tact; +he had no objection to your expecting a little humility of him. +It even seemed to Winterbourne at times that Giovanelli would +find a certain mental relief in being able to have a private +understanding with him--to say to him, as an intelligent man, +that, bless you, HE knew how extraordinary was this +young lady, and didn't flatter himself with delusive-- +or at least TOO delusive--hopes of matrimony and dollars. +On this occasion he strolled away from his companion to pluck +a sprig of almond blossom, which he carefully arranged +in his buttonhole. + +"I know why you say that," said Daisy, watching Giovanelli. +"Because you think I go round too much with HIM." +And she nodded at her attendant. + +"Every one thinks so--if you care to know," said Winterbourne. + +"Of course I care to know!" Daisy exclaimed seriously. +"But I don't believe it. They are only pretending to be shocked. +They don't really care a straw what I do. Besides, I don't +go round so much." + +"I think you will find they do care. They will show it disagreeably." + +Daisy looked at him a moment. "How disagreeably?" + +"Haven't you noticed anything?" Winterbourne asked. + +"I have noticed you. But I noticed you were as stiff as an umbrella +the first time I saw you." + +"You will find I am not so stiff as several others," +said Winterbourne, smiling. + +"How shall I find it?" + +"By going to see the others." + +"What will they do to me?" + +"They will give you the cold shoulder. Do you know what that means?" + +Daisy was looking at him intently; she began to color. +"Do you mean as Mrs. Walker did the other night?" + +"Exactly!" said Winterbourne. + +She looked away at Giovanelli, who was decorating himself +with his almond blossom. Then looking back at Winterbourne, +"I shouldn't think you would let people be so unkind!" she said. + +"How can I help it?" he asked. + +"I should think you would say something." + +"I do say something"; and he paused a moment. "I say that your mother +tells me that she believes you are engaged." + +"Well, she does," said Daisy very simply. + +Winterbourne began to laugh. "And does Randolph believe it?" he asked. + +"I guess Randolph doesn't believe anything," said Daisy. +Randolph's skepticism excited Winterbourne to further hilarity, +and he observed that Giovanelli was coming back to them. +Daisy, observing it too, addressed herself again to her countryman. +"Since you have mentioned it," she said, "I AM engaged." +* * * Winterbourne looked at her; he had stopped laughing. +"You don't believe!" she added. + +He was silent a moment; and then, "Yes, I believe it," he said. + +"Oh, no, you don't!" she answered. "Well, then--I am not!" + +The young girl and her cicerone were on their way to the gate +of the enclosure, so that Winterbourne, who had but lately entered, +presently took leave of them. A week afterward he went to dine +at a beautiful villa on the Caelian Hill, and, on arriving, +dismissed his hired vehicle. The evening was charming, and he +promised himself the satisfaction of walking home beneath the Arch +of Constantine and past the vaguely lighted monuments of the Forum. +There was a waning moon in the sky, and her radiance was not brilliant, +but she was veiled in a thin cloud curtain which seemed to diffuse +and equalize it. When, on his return from the villa (it was eleven +o'clock), Winterbourne approached the dusky circle of the Colosseum, +it recurred to him, as a lover of the picturesque, that the interior, +in the pale moonshine, would be well worth a glance. He turned aside +and walked to one of the empty arches, near which, as he observed, +an open carriage--one of the little Roman streetcabs--was stationed. +Then he passed in, among the cavernous shadows of the great structure, +and emerged upon the clear and silent arena. The place had never +seemed to him more impressive. One-half of the gigantic circus +was in deep shade, the other was sleeping in the luminous dusk. +As he stood there he began to murmur Byron's famous lines, +out of "Manfred," but before he had finished his quotation +he remembered that if nocturnal meditations in the Colosseum are +recommended by the poets, they are deprecated by the doctors. +The historic atmosphere was there, certainly; but the historic atmosphere, +scientifically considered, was no better than a villainous miasma. +Winterbourne walked to the middle of the arena, to take a more +general glance, intending thereafter to make a hasty retreat. +The great cross in the center was covered with shadow; +it was only as he drew near it that he made it out distinctly. +Then he saw that two persons were stationed upon the low steps which +formed its base. One of these was a woman, seated; her companion +was standing in front of her. + +Presently the sound of the woman's voice came to him distinctly +in the warm night air. "Well, he looks at us as one of the old +lions or tigers may have looked at the Christian martyrs!" +These were the words he heard, in the familiar accent of +Miss Daisy Miller. + +"Let us hope he is not very hungry," responded the ingenious Giovanelli. +"He will have to take me first; you will serve for dessert!" + +Winterbourne stopped, with a sort of horror, and, it must be added, +with a sort of relief. It was as if a sudden illumination had been +flashed upon the ambiguity of Daisy's behavior, and the riddle had +become easy to read. She was a young lady whom a gentleman need +no longer be at pains to respect. He stood there, looking at her-- +looking at her companion and not reflecting that though he saw +them vaguely, he himself must have been more brightly visible. +He felt angry with himself that he had bothered so much about +the right way of regarding Miss Daisy Miller. Then, as he was going +to advance again, he checked himself, not from the fear that he was doing +her injustice, but from a sense of the danger of appearing unbecomingly +exhilarated by this sudden revulsion from cautious criticism. +He turned away toward the entrance of the place, but, as he did so, +he heard Daisy speak again. + +"Why, it was Mr. Winterbourne! He saw me, and he cuts me!" + +What a clever little reprobate she was, and how smartly she played +at injured innocence! But he wouldn't cut her. Winterbourne came +forward again and went toward the great cross. Daisy had got up; +Giovanelli lifted his hat. Winterbourne had now begun to think +simply of the craziness, from a sanitary point of view, of a delicate +young girl lounging away the evening in this nest of malaria. +What if she WERE a clever little reprobate? that was no reason +for her dying of the perniciosa. "How long have you been here?" +he asked almost brutally. + +Daisy, lovely in the flattering moonlight, looked at him a moment. +Then--"All the evening," she answered, gently. * * * "I never saw +anything so pretty." + +"I am afraid," said Winterbourne, "that you will not think +Roman fever very pretty. This is the way people catch it. +I wonder," he added, turning to Giovanelli, "that you, +a native Roman, should countenance such a terrible indiscretion." + +"Ah," said the handsome native, "for myself I am not afraid." + +"Neither am I--for you! I am speaking for this young lady." + +Giovanelli lifted his well-shaped eyebrows and showed his brilliant teeth. +But he took Winterbourne's rebuke with docility. "I told the signorina it +was a grave indiscretion, but when was the signorina ever prudent?" + +"I never was sick, and I don't mean to be!" the signorina declared. +"I don't look like much, but I'm healthy! I was bound to see the Colosseum +by moonlight; I shouldn't have wanted to go home without that; +and we have had the most beautiful time, haven't we, Mr. Giovanelli? +If there has been any danger, Eugenio can give me some pills. +He has got some splendid pills." + +"I should advise you," said Winterbourne, "to drive home as fast +as possible and take one!" + +"What you say is very wise," Giovanelli rejoined. +"I will go and make sure the carriage is at hand." +And he went forward rapidly. + +Daisy followed with Winterbourne. He kept looking at her; +she seemed not in the least embarrassed. Winterbourne said nothing; +Daisy chattered about the beauty of the place. "Well, I +HAVE seen the Colosseum by moonlight!" she exclaimed. +"That's one good thing." Then, noticing Winterbourne's silence, +she asked him why he didn't speak. He made no answer; +he only began to laugh. They passed under one of the +dark archways; Giovanelli was in front with the carriage. +Here Daisy stopped a moment, looking at the young American. +"DID you believe I was engaged, the other day?" she asked. + +"It doesn't matter what I believed the other day," +said Winterbourne, still laughing. + +"Well, what do you believe now?" + +"I believe that it makes very little difference whether you +are engaged or not!" + +He felt the young girl's pretty eyes fixed upon him through +the thick gloom of the archway; she was apparently going to answer. +But Giovanelli hurried her forward. "Quick! quick!" he said; +"if we get in by midnight we are quite safe." + +Daisy took her seat in the carriage, and the fortunate Italian +placed himself beside her. "Don't forget Eugenio's pills!" +said Winterbourne as he lifted his hat. + +"I don't care," said Daisy in a little strange tone, "whether I have Roman +fever or not!" Upon this the cab driver cracked his whip, and they rolled +away over the desultory patches of the antique pavement. + +Winterbourne, to do him justice, as it were, mentioned to no one +that he had encountered Miss Miller, at midnight, in the Colosseum +with a gentleman; but nevertheless, a couple of days later, the fact +of her having been there under these circumstances was known to every +member of the little American circle, and commented accordingly. +Winterbourne reflected that they had of course known it +at the hotel, and that, after Daisy's return, there had been +an exchange of remarks between the porter and the cab driver. +But the young man was conscious, at the same moment, that it had +ceased to be a matter of serious regret to him that the little +American flirt should be "talked about" by low-minded menials. +These people, a day or two later, had serious information to give: +the little American flirt was alarmingly ill. Winterbourne, when the +rumor came to him, immediately went to the hotel for more news. +He found that two or three charitable friends had preceded him, +and that they were being entertained in Mrs. Miller's salon by Randolph. + +"It's going round at night," said Randolph--"that's +what made her sick. She's always going round at night. +I shouldn't think she'd want to, it's so plaguy dark. +You can't see anything here at night, except when there's a moon. +In America there's always a moon!" Mrs. Miller was invisible; +she was now, at least, giving her daughter the advantage of +her society. It was evident that Daisy was dangerously ill. + +Winterbourne went often to ask for news of her, and once he saw Mrs. Miller, +who, though deeply alarmed, was, rather to his surprise, perfectly composed, +and, as it appeared, a most efficient and judicious nurse. She talked +a good deal about Dr. Davis, but Winterbourne paid her the compliment +of saying to himself that she was not, after all, such a monstrous goose. +"Daisy spoke of you the other day," she said to him. "Half the time +she doesn't know what she's saying, but that time I think she did. +She gave me a message she told me to tell you. She told me to tell you +that she never was engaged to that handsome Italian. I am sure I am +very glad; Mr. Giovanelli hasn't been near us since she was taken ill. +I thought he was so much of a gentleman; but I don't call that very polite! +A lady told me that he was afraid I was angry with him for taking Daisy +round at night. Well, so I am, but I suppose he knows I'm a lady. +I would scorn to scold him. Anyway, she says she's not engaged. +I don't know why she wanted you to know, but she said to me three times, +'Mind you tell Mr. Winterbourne.' And then she told me to ask +if you remembered the time you went to that castle in Switzerland. +But I said I wouldn't give any such messages as that. Only, if she +is not engaged, I'm sure I'm glad to know it." + +But, as Winterbourne had said, it mattered very little. +A week after this, the poor girl died; it had been a terrible +case of the fever. Daisy's grave was in the little +Protestant cemetery, in an angle of the wall of imperial Rome, +beneath the cypresses and the thick spring flowers. +Winterbourne stood there beside it, with a number of other mourners, +a number larger than the scandal excited by the young lady's +career would have led you to expect. Near him stood Giovanelli, +who came nearer still before Winterbourne turned away. +Giovanelli was very pale: on this occasion he had no flower +in his buttonhole; he seemed to wish to say something. +At last he said, "She was the most beautiful young lady I +ever saw, and the most amiable"; and then he added in a moment, +"and she was the most innocent." + +Winterbourne looked at him and presently repeated his words, +"And the most innocent?" + +"The most innocent!" + +Winterbourne felt sore and angry. "Why the devil," he asked, +"did you take her to that fatal place?" + +Mr. Giovanelli's urbanity was apparently imperturbable. +He looked on the ground a moment, and then he said, "For myself +I had no fear; and she wanted to go." + +"That was no reason!" Winterbourne declared. + +The subtle Roman again dropped his eyes. "If she had lived, +I should have got nothing. She would never have married me, +I am sure." + +"She would never have married you?" + +"For a moment I hoped so. But no. I am sure." + +Winterbourne listened to him: he stood staring at the raw protuberance +among the April daisies. When he turned away again, Mr. Giovanelli, +with his light, slow step, had retired. + +Winterbourne almost immediately left Rome; but the following +summer he again met his aunt, Mrs. Costello at Vevey. +Mrs. Costello was fond of Vevey. In the interval Winterbourne +had often thought of Daisy Miller and her mystifying manners. +One day he spoke of her to his aunt--said it was on his conscience +that he had done her injustice. + +"I am sure I don't know," said Mrs. Costello. "How did your +injustice affect her?" + +"She sent me a message before her death which I didn't +understand at the time; but I have understood it since. +She would have appreciated one's esteem." + +"Is that a modest way," asked Mrs. Costello, "of saying that she would +have reciprocated one's affection?" + +Winterbourne offered no answer to this question; but he presently said, +"You were right in that remark that you made last summer. I was booked +to make a mistake. I have lived too long in foreign parts." + +Nevertheless, he went back to live at Geneva, whence there continue +to come the most contradictory accounts of his motives of sojourn: +a report that he is "studying" hard--an intimation that he is much +interested in a very clever foreign lady. + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Daisy Miller, by Henry James + + |