greeable voice, and her tone was
decidedly sociable. She gave Winterbourne a history of her movements
and intentions and those of her mother and brother, in Europe, and
enumerated, in particular, the various hotels at which they had stopped.
"That English lady in the cars," she said--"Miss Featherstone--asked me
if we didn't all live in hotels in America. I told her I had never been
in so many hotels in my life as since I came to Europe. I have never
seen so many--it's nothing but hotels." But Miss Miller did not make
this remark with a querulous accent; she appeared to be in the best
humor with everything. She declared that the hotels were very good, when
once you got used to their ways, and that Europe was perfectly sweet.
She was not disappointed--not a bit. Perhaps it was because she had
heard so much about it before. She had ever so many intimate friends
that had been there ever so many times. And then she had had ever so
many dresses and things from Paris. Whenever she put on a Paris dress
she felt as if she were in Europe.

"It was a kind of a wishing cap," said Winterbourne.

"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 lax