Produced by Judith Boss











DAISY MILLER: A STUDY



IN TWO PARTS



The text is that of the first American appearance in book form, 1879.











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 had 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.