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 a considerable time and he had received from her a couple of characteristic letters. “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 various third-rate Italians, with whom she rackets about in a way that makes much talk. Bring me that pretty novel of Cherbuliez’s—‘Paule Méré’1—and don’t come later than the 23d.”
Our friend would in the natural course of events, on arriving in Rome, have presently ascertained Mrs. Miller’s address at the American banker’s and gone to pay his compliments to Miss Daisy. “After what happened at Vevey I certainly think I may call upon them,” he said to Mrs. Costello.
“If after what happens—at Vevey and everywhere—you desire to keep up the acquaintance, you’re very welcome. Of course you’re not squeamish—a man may know every one. Men are welcome to the privilege!”
“Pray what is it then that ‘happens’—here for instance?” Winterbourne asked.
“Well, the girl tears about alone with her unmistakeably low 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 of the inferior sort and she takes them about to such houses as she may put her nose into. When she comes to a party—such a party as she can come to—she brings with her a gentleman with a good deal of manner and a wonderful moustache.”
“And where’s the mother?”
“I haven’t the least idea. They’re very dreadful people.”
Winterbourne thought them over in these new lights. “They’re very ignorant—very innocent only, and utterly uncivilised. Depend on it they’re not ‘bad.’ ”
“They’re hopelessly vulgar,” said Mrs. Costello. “Whether or no being hopelessly vulgar is being ‘bad’ is a question for the metaphysicians. They’re bad enough to blush for, at any rate; and for this short life that’s quite enough.”
The news that his little friend the child of nature of the Swiss lakeside was now surrounded by half a dozen wonderful moustaches 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 this young lady of his claim to her faithful remembrance, he called with more promptitude on 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 Via Gregoriana. Winterbourne found her in a little crimson drawing-room on a third floor; the room was filled with southern sunshine. He hadn’t been there ten minutes when the servant, appearing in the doorway, announced complacently “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, the parent of the pair slowly advanced.
“I guess I know you!” Randolph broke ground without delay.
“I’m sure you know a great many things”—and his old friend clutched him all interestedly by the arm. “How’s your education coming on?”
Daisy was engaged in some pretty babble with her hostess, but when she heard Winterbourne’s voice she quickly turned her head with a “Well, I declare!” which he met smiling. “I told you I should come, you know.”
“Well, I didn’t believe it,” she answered.
“I’m much obliged to you for that,” laughed the young man.
“You might have come to see me then,” Daisy went on as if they had parted the week before.
“I arrived only yesterday.”
“I don’t believe any such thing!” the girl declared afresh.
Winterbourne turned with a protesting smile to her mother, but this lady evaded his glance and, seating herself, fixed her eyes on her son. “We’ve got a bigger place than this,” Randolph hereupon broke out. “It’s all gold on the walls.”
Mrs. Miller, more of a fatalist apparently than ever, turned uneasily in her chair. “I told you if I was to bring you you’d say something!” she stated as for the benefit of such of the company as might hear it.
“I told you!” Randolph retorted. “I tell you, sir!” he added jocosely, giving Winterbourne a thump on the knee. “It is bigger too!”
As Daisy’s conversation with her hostess still occupied her Winterbourne judged it becoming to address a few words to her mother—such as “I hope you’ve been well since we parted at Vevey.”
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 bad. But I’ve got it worst!”
This proclamation, instead of embarrassing Mrs. Miller, seemed to soothe her by reconstituting the environment to which she was most accustomed. “I suffer from the liver,” she amiably whined to Winterbourne. “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 would. Oh up in Schenectady, he stands first; they think everything of Dr. Davis. 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 get at it. I’m sure there was nothing he wouldn’t try, and I didn’t care what he did to me if he only brought me relief. He was just going to try something new, and I just longed for it, when we came right off. Mr. Miller felt as if he wanted Daisy to see Europe for herself. But I couldn’t help writing the other day that I supposed it was all right for Daisy, but that I didn’t know as I could get on much longer 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’m disappointed,” she confessed. “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.”
Winterbourne, however, abounded in reassurance. “Ah wait a little, and you’ll grow very fond of it.”
“I hate it worse and worse every day!” cried Randolph.
“You’re like the infant Hannibal,”2 his friend laughed.
“No I ain’t—like any infant!” Randolph declared at a venture.
“Well, that’s so—and you never were!” his mother concurred. “But we’ve seen places,” she resumed, “that I’d put a long way ahead of Rome.” And in reply to Winterbourne’s interrogation, “There’s Zurich—up there in the mountains,” she instanced; “I think Zurich’s real lovely, and we hadn’t heard half so much about it.”
“The best place we’ve seen’s the City of Richmond!” said Randolph.
“He means the ship,” Mrs. Miller explained. “We crossed in that ship. Randolph had a good time on the City of Richmond.”
“It’s the best place I’ve struck,” the child repeated. “Only it was turned the wrong way.”
“Well, we’ve got to turn the right way sometime,” said Mrs. Miller with strained but weak optimism. Winterbourne expressed the hope that her daughter at least appreciated the so various interest of Rome, and she declared with some spirit 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’ve all been very sweet—they’ve 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, but in quite the same free form. “I’ve been telling Mrs. Walker how mean you were!”
“And what’s the evidence you’ve offered?” he asked, a trifle disconcerted, for all his superior gallantry, by her inadequate measure 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 sweet appeal to his fond fancy, not to say to his finest curiosity. He remembered how 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 up at Vevey,” Daisy said. “You wouldn’t do most anything. You wouldn’t stay there when I asked
you.”
“Dearest young lady,” cried Winterbourne, with generous passion, “have I come all the way to Rome only to be riddled by your silver shafts?”
“Just hear him say that!”—and she gave an affectionate twist to a bow on her hostess’s dress. “Did you ever hear anything so quaint?”
“So ‘quaint,’ my dear?” echoed Mrs. Walker more critically—quite in the tone of a partisan of Winterbourne.
“Well, I don’t know”—and the girl continued to finger her ribbons. “Mrs. Walker, I want to tell you something.”
“Say, mother-r,” broke in 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’m delighted to hear it.”
“I’ve got a lovely dress.”
“I’m very sure of that.”
“But I want to ask a favour—permission to bring a friend.”
“I shall be happy to see any of your friends,” said Mrs. Walker, who turned with a smile to Mrs. Miller.
“Oh they’re not my friends,” cried that lady, squirming in shy repudiation. “It seems as if they didn’t take to me—I never spoke to one of them!”
“It’s an intimate friend of mine, Mr. Giovanelli,” Daisy pursued without a tremor in her young clearness or a shadow on her shining bloom.
Mrs. Walker had a pause and gave a rapid glance at Winterbourne. “I shall be glad to see Mr. Giovanelli,” she then returned.
“He’s just the finest kind of Italian,” Daisy pursued with the prettiest serenity. “He’s a great friend of mine and the handsomest man in the world—except Mr. Winterbourne! He knows plenty of Italians, but he wants to know some Americans. It seems as if he was crazy about Americans. He’s tremendously bright. He’s perfectly lovely!”
It was settled that this paragon should be brought to Mrs. Walker’s party, and then Mrs. Miller prepared to take her leave. “I guess we’ll go right back to the hotel,” she remarked with a confessed failure of the larger imagination.
“You may go back to the hotel, mother,” Daisy replied, “but I’m just going to walk round.”
“She’s going to go it with Mr. Giovanelli,” Randolph unscrupulously commented.
“I’m going to go it on the Pincio,”3 Daisy peaceably smiled, while the way that she “condoned” these things almost melted Winterbourne’s heart.
“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 consider it’s safe, Daisy,” her hostess firmly asserted.
“Neither do I then,” Mrs. Miller thus borrowed confidence to add. “You’ll catch the fever as sure as you live. Remember what Dr. Davis told you!”
“Give her some of that medicine before she starts in,” Randolph suggested.
The company had risen to its feet; Daisy, still showing her pretty teeth, bent over and kissed her hostess. “Mrs. Walker, you’re too perfect,” she simply said. “I’m not going alone; I’m going to meet a friend.”
“Your friend won’t keep you from catching the fever even if it is his own second nature,” Mrs. Miller observed.
“Is it Mr. Giovanelli that’s the dangerous attraction?” Mrs. Walker asked without mercy.
Winterbourne was watching the challenged 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 brought out all affirmatively and without a shade of hesitation: “Mr. Giovanelli—the beautiful Giovanelli.”
“My dear young friend”—and, taking her hand, Mrs. Walker turned to pleading—“don’t prowl off to the Pincio at this hour to meet a beautiful Italian.”
“Well, he speaks first-rate English,” Mrs. Miller incoherently mentioned.
“Gracious me,” Daisy piped up, “I don’t want to do anything that’s going to affect my health—or my character either! There’s an easy way to settle it.” Her eyes continued to play over Winterbourne. “The Pincio’s only a hundred yards off, and if Mr. Winterbourne were as polite as he pretends he’d offer to walk right in with me!”
Winterbourne’s politeness hastened to proclaim itself, and the girl gave him gracious leave to accompany her. They passed downstairs before her mother, and at the door he saw Mrs. Miller’s carriage drawn up, with the ornamental courier whose acquaintance he had made at Vevey seated within. “Good-bye, Eugenio,” cried Daisy; “I’m going to take a walk!” The distance from 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 on the extremely pretty young woman of English race who passed through it, with some difficulty, on his arm; and he wondered what on earth had been in Daisy’s mind when she proposed to exhibit herself unattended to its appreciation. His own mission, to her sense, was apparently to consign her to the hands of Mr. Giovanelli; but, at once annoyed and gratified, he resolved that he would do no such thing.
“Why haven’t you been to see me?” she meanwhile asked. “You can’t get out of that.”
“I’ve had the honour of telling you that I’ve only just stepped out of the train.”
“You must have stayed in the train a good while after it stopped!” she derisively cried. “I suppose you were asleep. You’ve 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’re 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—in fact I was sure it would be deadly pokey. I foresaw we should be going round all the time with one of those dreadful old men who 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’re 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’ll 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, where you look at the view.”
Winterbourne at this took a stand. “I certainly shan’t help you to find him.”
“Then I shall find him without you,” Daisy said with spirit.
“You certainly won’t leave me!” he protested.
She burst into her familiar 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 descried hereupon at some distance a little figure that stood with folded arms and nursing its cane. It had a handsome face, a hat artfully poised, a glass in one eye and a nosegay in its buttonhole. Daisy’s friend looked at it a moment and then said: “Do you mean to speak to that thing?”
“Do I mean to speak to him? Why you don’t suppose I mean to communicate by signs!”
“Pray understand then,” the young man returned, “that I intend to remain with you.”
Daisy stopped and looked at him without a sign of troubled consciousness, with nothing in her face but her charming eyes, her charming teeth and her happy dimples. “Well, she’s a cool one!” he thought.
“I don’t like the way you say that,” she declared. “It’s too imperious.”
“I beg your pardon if I say it wrong. The main point’s to give you an idea of my meaning.”
The girl looked at him more gravely, but with eyes that were prettier than ever. “I’ve never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me or to interfere with anything I do.”
“I think that’s just where your mistake has come in,” he retorted. “You should sometimes listen to a gentleman—the right one.”
At this she began to laugh again. “I do nothing but listen to gentlemen! Tell me if Mr. Giovanelli is the right one.”
The gentleman with the nosegay in his bosom had now made out our two friends and was approaching Miss Miller with obsequious rapidity. He bowed to Winterbourne as well as to the latter’s compatriot; he seemed to shine, in his coxcombical way, with the desire to please and the fact of his own intelligent joy, though Winterbourne thought him not a bad-looking fellow. But he nevertheless said to Daisy: “No, he’s not the right one.”
She had clearly a natural turn for free introductions; she mentioned with the easiest grace the name of each of her companions to the other. She strolled forward with one of them on either hand; Mr. Giovanelli, who spoke English very cleverly—Winterbourne afterwards learned that he had practised the idiom upon a great many American heiresses—addressed her a great deal of very polite nonsense. He had the best possible manners, and the young American, who said nothing, reflected on that depth of Italian subtlety, so strangely opposed to Anglo-Saxon simplicity, which enables people to show a smoother surface in proportion as they’re more acutely displeased. 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 that suggested far-stretching intentions. Winterbourne flattered himself he had taken his measure. “He’s anything but a gentleman,” said the young American; “he isn’t even a very plausible imitation of one. He’s a music-master or a penny-a-liner or a third-rate artist. He’s awfully on his good behaviour, but damn his fine eyes!” Mr. Giovanelli had indeed great advantages; but it was deeply disgusting to Daisy’s other friend that something in her shouldn’t have instinctively discriminated against such a type. Giovanelli chattered and jested and made himself agreeable according to his honest Roman lights. It was true that if he was an imitation the imitation was studied. “Nevertheless,” Winterbourne said to himself, “a nice girl ought to know!” And then he came back to the dreadful question of 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 wasn’t it possible to regard the choice of these very circumstances as a proof more of vulgarity than of anything else? Singular though it may seem, Winterbourne was vexed that the girl, in joining her amoroso,4 shouldn’t appear more impatient of his own company, and he was vexed precisely because of his inclination. It was impossible to regard her as a wholly unspotted flower—she lacked a certain indispensable fineness; and it would therefore much simplify the situation to be able to treat her as the subject of one of the visitations known to romancers as “lawless passions.” That she should seem to wish to get rid of him would have helped him to think more lightly of her, just as to be able to think more lightly of her would have made her less perplexing. Daisy at any rate continued on this occasion 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 after all struck one of them, to the pretty speeches of the other, when a carriage that had detached itself from the revolving train drew up beside the path. At the same moment Winterbourne noticed 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—and all to find her flushed, excited, scandalised. “It’s really too dreadful”—she earnestly appealed to him. “That crazy girl mustn’t do this sort of thing. She mustn’t walk here with you two men. Fifty people have remarked her.”
Winterbourne—suddenly and rather oddly rubbed the wrong way by this—raised his grave 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’s very innocent,” he reasoned in his own troubled interest.
“She’s very reckless,” cried Mrs. Walker, “and goodness knows how far—left to itself—it may go. Did you ever,” she proceeded to enquire, “see anything so blatantly imbecile as the mother? After you had all left me just now I couldn’t sit still for thinking of it. It seemed too pitiful not even to attempt to save them. I ordered the carriage and put on my bonnet and came here as quickly as possible. Thank heaven I’ve found you!”
“What do you propose to do with us?” Winterbourne uncomfortably smiled.
“To ask her to get in, to drive her about here for half an hour—so that the world may see she’s not running absolutely wild—and then take her safely home.”
“I don’t think it’s a very happy thought,” he said after reflexion, “but you’re at liberty to try.”
Mrs. Walker accordingly tried. The young man went in pursuit of their young lady who had simply nodded and smiled, from her distance, at her recent patroness in the carriage and then had gone her way with her own companion. On learning, in the event, that Mrs. Walker had followed her, she retraced her steps, however, with a perfect good grace and with Mr. Giovanelli at her side. She professed herself “enchanted” to have a chance to present this gentleman to her good friend, and immediately achieved the introduction; declaring with it, and as if it were of as little importance, that she had never in her life seen anything so lovely as that lady’s carriage-rug.
“I’m glad you admire it,” said her poor pursuer, smiling sweetly. “Will you get in and let me put it over you?”
“Oh no, thank you!”—Daisy knew her mind. “I’ll admire it ever so much more as I see you driving round with it.”
“Do get in and drive round with me,” Mrs. Walker pleaded.
“That would be charming, but it’s so fascinating just as I am!”—with which the girl radiantly took in the gentlemen on either side of her.
“It may be fascinating, dear child, but it’s not the custom here,” urged the lady of the victoria,5 leaning forward in this vehicle with her hands devoutly clasped.
“Well, it ought to be then!” Daisy imperturbably laughed. “If I didn’t walk I’d expire.”
“You should walk with your mother, dear,” cried Mrs. Walker with a loss of patience.
“With my mother dear?” the girl amusedly echoed. Winterbourne saw she scented interference. “My mother never walked ten steps in her life. And then, you know,” she blandly added, “I’m more than five years old.”
“You’re old enough to be more reasonable. You’re old enough, dear Miss Miller, to be talked about.”
Daisy wondered to extravagance. “Talked about? What do you mean?”
“Come into my carriage and I’ll tell you.”
Daisy turned shining eyes again from one of the gentlemen beside her to the other. Mr. Giovanelli was bowing to and fro, rubbing down his gloves and laughing irresponsibly; Winterbourne thought the scene the most unpleasant possible. “I don’t think I want to know what you mean,” the girl presently said. “I don’t think I should like it.”
Winterbourne only wished Mrs. Walker would tuck up her carriage-rug and drive away; but this lady, as she afterwards told him, didn’t feel she could “rest there.”
“Should you prefer being thought a very reckless girl?” she accordingly asked.
“Gracious me!” exclaimed Daisy. She looked again at Mr. Giovanelli, then she turned to her other companion. There was a small pink flush in her cheek; she was tremendously pretty. “Does Mr. Winterbourne think,” she put to him with a wonderful bright intensity of appeal, “that—to save my reputation—I ought to get into the carriage?”
It really embarrassed him; for an instant he cast about—so strange was it to hear her speak that way of her “reputation.” But he himself in fact had to speak in accordance with gallantry. The finest gallantry here was surely just to tell her the truth; and the truth, for our young man, as the few indications I have been able to give have made him known to the reader, was that his charming friend should listen to the voice of civilised society. He took in again her exquisite prettiness and then said the more distinctly: “I think you should get into the carriage.”
Daisy gave the rein to her amusement. “I never heard anything so stiff! If this is improper, Mrs. Walker,” she pursued, “then I’m all improper, and you had better give me right up. Good-bye; 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 the lady of the victoria declared that if he refused her this favour she would never speak to him again. She was evidently wound up. He accordingly hastened to overtake Daisy and her more faithful ally, and, offering her his hand, told her that Mrs. Walker had made a stringent claim on his presence. He had expected her to answer with something rather free, something still more significant of the perversity from which the voice of society, through the lips of their distressed friend, had so earnestly endeavoured to dissuade her. But she only let her hand slip, as she scarce looked at him, through his slightly awkward grasp; while Mr. Giovanelli, to make it worse, bade him farewell with too emphatic a flourish of the hat.
Winterbourne was not in the best possible humour as he took his seat beside the author of his sacrifice. “That was not clever of you,” he said candidly, as the vehicle mingled again with the throng of carriages.
“In such a case,” his companion answered, “I don’t want to be clever—I only want to be true!”
“Well, your truth has only offended the strange little creature—it has only put her off.”
“It has happened very well”—Mrs. Walker accepted her work. “If she’s so perfectly determined to compromise herself the sooner one knows it the better—one can act accordingly.”
“I suspect she meant no great harm, you know,” Winterbourne maturely opined.
“So I thought a month ago. But she has been going too far.”
“What has she been doing?”
“Everything that’s not done here. Flirting with any man she can 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 melts away when the visitors come.”
“But her brother,” laughed Winterbourne, “sits up till two in the morning.”
“He must be edified by what he sees. I’m told that at their hotel every one’s talking about her and that a smile goes round among the servants when a gentleman comes and asks for Miss Miller.”
“Ah we needn’t mind the servants!” Winterbourne compassionately signified. “The poor girl’s only fault,” he presently added, “is her complete lack of education.”
“She’s naturally indelicate,” Mrs. Walker, on her side, reasoned. “Take that example this morning. How long had you known her at Vevey?”
“A couple of days.”
“Imagine then the taste of her making it a personal matter that you should have left the place!”
He agreed that taste wasn’t the strong point of the Millers—after which he was silent for some moments; but only at last to add: “I suspect, Mrs. Walker, that you and I have lived too long at Geneva!” And he further noted that he should be glad to learn with what particular design she had made him enter her carriage.
“I wanted to enjoin on you the importance of your ceasing your relations with Miss Miller; that of your not appearing to flirt with her; that of your giving her no further opportunity to expose herself; that of your in short letting her alone.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do anything quite so enlightened as that,” he returned. “I like her awfully, you know.”
“All the more reason you shouldn’t help her to make a scandal.”
“Well, there shall be nothing scandalous in my attentions to her,” he was willing to promise.
“There certainly will be in the way she takes them. But I’ve said what I had on my conscience,” Mrs. Walker pursued. “If you wish to rejoin the young lady I’ll put you down. Here, by the way, you have a chance.”
The carriage was engaged in that part of the Pincian drive which overhangs the wall of Rome and overlooks the beautiful Villa Borghese. It is bordered by a large parapet, near which are several seats. One of these, 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 to the parapet. Winterbourne had asked the coachman to stop; he now descended from the carriage. His companion looked at him a moment in silence and then, while he raised his hat, drove majestically away. He stood where he had alighted; 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 remained a little looking off at the great flat-topped pine-clusters of Villa Borghese; then the girl’s attendant admirer seated himself familiarly on 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 the gallant Giovanelli 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 so rest on her shoulder that both of their heads were hidden from Winterbourne. This young man stayed but a moment longer; then he began to walk. But he walked—not toward the couple united beneath the parasol, rather toward the residence of his aunt Mrs. Costello.