第17章

"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.