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Daisy Miller

by Henry James

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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 tte 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