leadingly,
"don't walk off to the Pincio at this hour to meet a beautiful Italian."

"Well, he speaks English," said Mrs. Miller.

"Gracious me!" Daisy exclaimed, "I don't to do anything improper.
There's an easy way to settle it." She continued to glance at
Winterbourne. "The Pincio is only a hundred yards distant; and if Mr.
Winterbourne were as polite as he pretends, he would offer to walk with
me!"

Winterbourne's politeness hastened to affirm itself, and the young girl
gave him gracious leave to accompany her. They passed downstairs
before her mother, and at the door Winterbourne perceived Mrs. Miller's
carriage drawn up, with the ornamental courier whose acquaintance he had
made at Vevey seated within. "Goodbye, Eugenio!" cried Daisy; "I'm going
to take a walk." The distance from the 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 upon
the extremely pretty young foreign lady who was passing through it upon
his arm; and he wondered what on earth had been in Daisy's mind when
she proposed to expose herself, unattended, to its appreciation. His own
mission, to her sense, apparently, was to consign her to the hands
of Mr. Giovanelli; but Winterbourne, at once annoyed and gratified,
resolved that he would do no such thing.

"Why haven't you been to see me?" asked Daisy. "You can't get out of
that."

"I have had the honor of telling you that I have only just stepped out
of the train."

"You must have stayed in the train a good while after it stopped!" cried
the young girl with her little laugh. "I suppose you were asleep. You
have 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 are going to stay all winter,
if we don't die of the fever; and I guess we'll stay then. It's a great