Americans -- Europe -- Fiction; Europe -- Fiction; Psychological fiction; Young women -- Fiction
“Yes,” said Miss Miller without examining this analogy; “it always made
me wish I was here. But I needn’t have done that for dresses. I am sure
they send all the pretty ones to America; you see the most frightful
things here. The only thing I don’t like,” she proceeded, “is the
society. There isn’t any society; or, if there is, I don’t know where it
keeps itself. Do you? I suppose there is some society somewhere, but I
haven’t seen anything of it. I’m very fond of society, and I have always
had a great deal of it. I don’t mean only in Schenectady, but in New
York. I used to go to New York every winter. In New York I had lots of
society. Last winter I had seventeen dinners given me; and three of them
were by gentlemen,” added Daisy Miller. “I have more friends in New York
than in Schenectady--more gentleman friends; and more young lady friends
too,” she resumed in a moment. She paused again for an instant; she was
looking at Winterbourne with all her prettiness in her lively eyes and
in her light, slightly monotonous smile. “I have always had,” she said,
“a great deal of gentlemen’s society.”
Poor Winterbourne was amused, perplexed, and decidedly charmed. He
had never yet heard a young girl express herself in just this fashion;
never, at least, save in cases where to say such things seemed a kind of
demonstrative evidence of a certain laxity of deportment. And yet was he
to accuse Miss Daisy Miller of actual or potential inconduite, as they
said at Geneva? He felt that he had lived at Geneva so long that he
had lost a good deal; he had become dishabituated to the American tone.
Never, indeed, since he had grown old enough to appreciate things, had
he encountered a young American girl of so pronounced a type as this.
Certainly she was very charming, but how deucedly sociable! Was she
simply a pretty girl from New York State? Were they all like that, the
pretty girls who had a good deal of gentlemen’s society? Or was she also
a designing, an audacious, an unscrupulous young person? Winterbourne
had lost his instinct in this matter, and his reason could not help him.
Miss Daisy Miller looked extremely innocent. Some people had told him
that, after all, American girls were exceedingly innocent; and others
had told him that, after all, they were not. He was inclined to think
Miss Daisy Miller was a flirt--a pretty American flirt. He had never, as
yet, had any relations with young ladies of this category. He had
known, here in Europe, two or three women--persons older than Miss Daisy
Miller, and provided, for respectability’s sake, with husbands--who were
great coquettes--dangerous, terrible women, with whom one’s relations
were liable to take a serious turn. But this young girl was not a
coquette in that sense; she was very unsophisticated; she was only a
pretty American flirt. Winterbourne was almost grateful for having found
the formula that applied to Miss Daisy Miller. He leaned back in his
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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