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Page 10
"I said I should take the liberty of introducing her to my admirable aunt."
"I am much obliged to you."
"It was to guarantee my respectability," said Winterbourne.
"And pray who is to guarantee hers?"
"Ah, you are cruel!" said the young man. "She's a very nice young girl."
"You don't say that as if you believed it," Mrs. Costello observed.
"She is completely uncultivated," Winterbourne went on.
"But she is wonderfully pretty, and, in short, she is very nice.
To prove that I believe it, I am going to take her to the
Chateau de Chillon."
"You two are going off there together? I should say it
proved just the contrary. How long had you known her,
may I ask, when this interesting project was formed?
You haven't been twenty-four hours in the house."
"I have known her half an hour!" said Winterbourne, smiling.
"Dear me!" cried Mrs. Costello. "What a dreadful girl!"
Her nephew was silent for some moments. "You really think, then,"
he began earnestly, and with a desire for trustworthy information--"you
really think that--" But he paused again.
"Think what, sir?" said his aunt.
"That she is the sort of young lady who expects a man, sooner or later,
to carry her off?"
"I haven't the least idea what such young ladies expect a man to do.
But I really think that you had better not meddle with little American
girls that are uncultivated, as you call them. You have lived too long
out of the country. You will be sure to make some great mistake.
You are too innocent."
"My dear aunt, I am not so innocent," said Winterbourne,
smiling and curling his mustache.
"You are guilty too, then!"
Winterbourne continued to curl his mustache meditatively.
"You won't let the poor girl know you then?" he asked at last.
"Is it literally true that she is going to the Chateau de Chillon with you?"
"I think that she fully intends it."
"Then, my dear Frederick," said Mrs. Costello, "I must decline the honor
of her acquaintance. I am an old woman, but I am not too old, thank Heaven,
to be shocked!"
"But don't they all do these things--the young girls in America?"
Winterbourne inquired.
Mrs. Costello stared a moment. "I should like to see my granddaughters
do them!" she declared grimly.
This seemed to throw some light upon the matter, for Winterbourne remembered
to have heard that his pretty cousins in New York were "tremendous flirts."
If, therefore, Miss Daisy Miller exceeded the liberal margin allowed to
these young ladies, it was probable that anything might be expected of her.
Winterbourne was impatient to see her again, and he was vexed with himself
that, by instinct, he should not appreciate her justly.
Though he was impatient to see her, he hardly knew what he should
say to her about his aunt's refusal to become acquainted with her;
but he discovered, promptly enough, that with Miss Daisy Miller there
was no great need of walking on tiptoe. He found her that evening in
the garden, wandering about in the warm starlight like an indolent sylph,
and swinging to and fro the largest fan he had ever beheld.
It was ten o'clock. He had dined with his aunt, had been sitting with
her since dinner, and had just taken leave of her till the morrow.
Miss Daisy Miller seemed very glad to see him; she declared it
was the longest evening she had ever passed.
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