Daisy Miller / Дэйзи Миллер. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Costello, with dignity, “that you had made her acquaintance.”

“We simply met in the garden, and we talked a bit.”

“Tout bonnement![9 - Tout bonnement! – (фр.) Вот так попросту!] And pray what did you say?”

“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.

“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 Château 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 had 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 moustache.

“You are too guilty, then!”

Winterbourne continued to curl his moustache, 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 Château de Chillon with you?”

“I think that she fully intends it.”

“Then, my dear Frederick,” said Mrs. Costello, “I must decline the honour of her acquaintance.