Daisy Miller | Page 7

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