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Page 15
"Do tell her she can't," said Mrs. Miller to the courier.
"I think you had better not go out in a boat, mademoiselle," Eugenio declared.
Winterbourne wished to Heaven this pretty girl were not so familiar
with her courier; but he said nothing.
"I suppose you don't think it's proper!" Daisy exclaimed.
"Eugenio doesn't think anything's proper."
"I am at your service," said Winterbourne.
"Does mademoiselle propose to go alone?" asked Eugenio of Mrs. Miller.
"Oh, no; with this gentleman!" answered Daisy's mamma.
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 definite conclusion 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 soberly elegant 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.
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