The courier looked for a moment at Winterbourne--the latter

thought he was smiling--and then, solemnly, with a bow,
"As mademoiselle pleases!" he said.

"Oh, I hoped you would make a fuss!" said Daisy.
"I don't care to go now."

"I myself shall make a fuss if you don't go," said Winterbourne.
"That's all I want--a little fuss!" And the young girl began

to laugh again.
"Mr. Randolph has gone to bed!" the courier announced frigidly.

"Oh, Daisy; now we can go!" said Mrs. Miller.
Daisy turned away from Winterbourne, looking at him,

smiling and fanning herself. "Good night," she said;
"I hope you are disappointed, or disgusted, or something!"

He looked at her, taking the hand she offered him.
"I am puzzled," he answered.

"Well, I hope it won't keep you awake!" she said very smartly;
and, under the escort of the privileged Eugenio, the two ladies

passed toward the house.
Winterbourne stood looking after them; he was indeed puzzled.

He lingered beside the lake for a quarter of an hour, turning over
the mystery of the young girl's sudden familiarities and caprices.

But the only very definiteconclusion he came to was that he should
enjoy deucedly "going off" with her somewhere.

Two days afterward he went off with her to the Castle of Chillon.
He waited for her in the large hall of the hotel, where the couriers,

the servants, the foreign tourists, were lounging about and staring.
It was not the place he should have chosen, but she had appointed it.

She came tripping downstairs, buttoning her long gloves,
squeezing her folded parasol against her pretty figure,

dressed in the perfection of a soberlyelegant traveling costume.
Winterbourne was a man of imagination and, as our ancestors

used to say, sensibility; as he looked at her dress and,
on the great staircase, her little rapid, confiding step,

he felt as if there were something romantic going forward.
He could have believed he was going to elope with her.

He passed out with her among all the idle people that were
assembled there; they were all looking at her very hard;

she had begun to chatter as soon as she joined him.
Winterbourne's preference had been that they should be

conveyed to Chillon in a carriage; but she expressed a lively
wish to go in the little steamer; she declared that she had

a passion for steamboats. There was always such a lovely
breeze upon the water, and you saw such lots of people.

The sail was not long, but Winterbourne's companion found time
to say a great many things. To the young man himself their

little excursion was so much of an escapade--an adventure--
that, even allowing for her habitual sense of freedom,

he had some expectation of seeing her regard it in the same way.
But it must be confessed that, in this particular,

he was disappointed. Daisy Miller was extremely animated,
she was in charming spirits; but she was apparently not at

all excited; she was not fluttered; she avoided neither his eyes
nor those of anyone else; she blushed neither when she looked

at him nor when she felt that people were looking at her.
People continued to look at her a great deal, and Winterbourne took

much satisfaction in his pretty companion's distinguished air.
He had been a little afraid that she would talk loud, laugh overmuch,

and even, perhaps, desire to move about the boat a good deal.
But he quite forgot his fears; he sat smiling, with his

eyes upon her face, while, without moving from her place,
she delivered herself of a great number of original reflections.

It was the most charming garrulity he had ever heard.
he had assented to the idea that she was "common"; but was she so,

after all, or was he simply getting used to her commonness?
Her conversation was chiefly of what metaphysicians term the

objective cast, but every now and then it took a subjective turn.
"What on EARTH are you so grave about?" she suddenly demanded,

fixing her agreeable eyes upon Winterbourne's.
"Am I grave?" he asked. "I had an idea I was grinning from ear to ear."

"You look as if you were taking me to a funeral. If that's a grin,
your ears are very near together."

"Should you like me to dance a hornpipe on the deck?"
"Pray do, and I'll carry round your hat. It will pay the expenses

of our journey."
"I never was better pleased in my life," murmured Winterbourne.

She looked at him a moment and then burst into a little laugh.
"I like to make you say those things! You're a queer mixture!"

In the castle, after they had landed, the subjective element
decidedly prevailed. Daisy tripped about the vaulted chambers,

rustled her skirts in the corkscrew staircases, flirted back with
a pretty little cry and a shudder from the edge of the oubliettes,

and turned a singularly well-shaped ear to everything that
Winterbourne told her about the place. But he saw that she

cared very little for feudal antiquities and that the dusky
traditions of Chillon made but a slight impression upon her.

They had the good fortune to have been able to walk about without
other companionship than that of the custodian; and Winterbourne

arranged with this functionary that they should not be hurried--
that they should linger and pause wherever they chose. The custodian

interpreted the bargain generously--Winterbourne, on his side,
had been generous--and ended by leaving them quite to themselves.

Miss Miller's observations were not remarkable for logical consistency;
for anything she wanted to say she was sure to find a pretext.

She found a great many pretexts in the rugged embrasures of Chillon
for asking Winterbourne sudden questions about himself--his family,

his previous history, his tastes, his habits, his intentions--and for
supplying information upon corresponding points in her own personality.

Of her own tastes, habits, and intentions Miss Miller was prepared
to give the most definite, and indeed the most favorable account.

"Well, I hope you know enough!" she said to her companion,
after he had told her the history of the unhappy Bonivard.

"I never saw a man that knew so much!" The history of Bonivard
had evidently, as they say, gone into one ear and out of the other.

But Daisy went on to say that she wished Winterbourne would travel
with them and "go round" with them; they might know something,

in that case. "Don't you want to come and teach Randolph?" she asked.
Winterbourne said that nothing could possibly please him so much,

but that he unfortunately other occupations. "Other occupations?
I don't believe it!" said Miss Daisy. "What do you mean?

You are not in business." The young man admitted that he was not
in business; but he had engagements which, even within a day or two,

would force him to go back to Geneva. "Oh, bother!" she said;
"I don't believe it!" and she began to talk about something else.

But a few moments later, when he was pointing out to her the pretty
design of an antiquefireplace, she broke out irrelevantly,

"You don't mean to say you are going back to Geneva?"
"It is a melancholy fact that I shall have to return to Geneva tomorrow."

"Well, Mr. Winterbourne," said Daisy, "I think you're horrid!"
"Oh, don't say such dreadful things!" said Winterbourne--"just

at the last!"
"The last!" cried the young girl; "I call it the first. I have half

a mind to leave you here and go straight back to the hotel alone."
And for the next ten minutes she did nothing but call him horrid.

Poor Winterbourne was fairly bewildered; no young lady had as yet done
him the honor to be so agitated by the announcement of his movements.

His companion, after this, ceased to pay any attention to the
curiosities of Chillon or the beauties of the lake; she opened fire

upon the mysterious charmer in Geneva whom she appeared to have
instantly taken it for granted that he was hurrying back to see.