Mrs. Costello stared a moment. “I should like to see my granddaughters do them!” she then grimly returned.

  This seemed to throw some light on the matter, for Winterbourne remembered to have heard his pretty cousins in New York, the daughters of this lady’s two daughters, called “tremendous flirts.” If therefore Miss Daisy Miller exceeded the liberal licence allowed to these young women it was probable she did go even by the American allowance rather far. Winterbourne was impatient to see her again, and it vexed, it even a little humiliated him, that he shouldn’t by instinct appreciate her justly.

  Though so impatient to see her again he hardly knew what ground he should give for his aunt’s refusal to become acquainted with her; but he discovered promptly enough that with Miss Daisy Miller there was no great need of walking on tiptoe. He found her that evening in the garden, wandering about in the warm starlight after the manner of an indolent sylph and swinging to and fro the largest fan he had ever beheld. It was ten o’clock. He had dined with his aunt, had been sitting with her since dinner, and had just taken leave of her till the morrow. His young friend frankly rejoiced to renew their intercourse; she pronounced it the stupidest evening she had ever passed.

  “Have you been all alone?” he asked with no intention of an epigram and no effect of her perceiving one.

  “I’ve been walking round with mother. But mother gets tired walking round,” Miss Miller explained.

  “Has she gone to bed?”

  “No, she doesn’t like to go to bed. She doesn’t sleep scarcely any—not three hours. She says she doesn’t know how she lives. She’s dreadfully nervous. I guess she sleeps more than she thinks. She’s gone somewhere after Randolph; she wants to try to get him to go to bed. He doesn’t like to go to bed.”

  The soft impartiality of her constatations, as Winterbourne would have termed them, was a thing by itself—exquisite little fatalist as they seemed to make her. “Let us hope she’ll persuade him,” he encouragingly said.

  “Well, she’ll talk to him all she can—but he doesn’t like her to talk to him”: with which Miss Daisy opened and closed her fan. “She’s going to try to get Eugenio to talk to him. But Randolph ain’t afraid of Eugenio. Eugenio’s a splendid courier, but he can’t make much impression on Randolph! I don’t believe he’ll go to bed before eleven.” Her detachment from any invidious judgement of this was, to her companion’s sense, inimitable; and it appeared that Randolph’s vigil was in fact triumphantly prolonged, for Winterbourne attended her in her stroll for some time without meeting her mother. “I’ve been looking round for that lady you want to introduce me to,” she resumed—“I guess she’s your aunt.” Then on his admitting the fact and expressing some curiosity as to how she had learned it, she said she had heard all about Mrs. Costello from the chambermaid. She was very quiet and very comme il faut;2 she wore white puffs; she spoke to no one and she never dined at the common table. Every two days she had a headache. “I think that’s a lovely description, headache and all!” said Miss Daisy, chattering along in her thin gay voice. “I want to know her ever so much. I know just what your aunt would be; I know I’d like her. She’d be very exclusive. I like a lady to be exclusive; I’m dying to be exclusive myself. Well, I guess we are exclusive, mother and I. We don’t speak to any one—or they don’t speak to us. I suppose it’s about the same thing. Anyway, I shall be ever so glad to meet your aunt.”

  Winterbourne was embarrassed—he could but trump up some evasion. “She’d be most happy, but I’m afraid those tiresome headaches are always to be reckoned with.”

  The girl looked at him through the fine dusk. “Well, I suppose she doesn’t have a headache every day.”

  He had to make the best of it. “She tells me she wonderfully does.” He didn’t know what else to say.

  Miss Miller stopped and stood looking at him. Her prettiness was still visible in the darkness; she kept flapping to and fro her enormous fan. “She doesn’t want to know me!” she then lightly broke out. “Why don’t you say so? You needn’t be afraid! I’m not afraid!” And she quite crowed for the fun of it.

  Winterbourne distinguished however a wee false note in this: he was touched, shocked, mortified by it. “My dear young lady, she knows no one. She goes through life immured. It’s her wretched health.”

  The young girl walked on a few steps in the glee of the thing. “You needn’t be afraid,” she repeated. “Why should she want to know me?” Then she paused again; she was close to the parapet of the garden, and in front of her was the starlit lake. There was a vague sheen on its surface, and in the distance were dimly-seen mountain forms. Daisy Miller looked out at these great lights and shades and again proclaimed a gay indifference—“Gracious! she is exclusive!” Winterbourne wondered if she were seriously wounded and for a moment almost wished her sense of injury might be such as to make it becoming in him to reassure and comfort her. He had a pleasant sense that she would be all accessible to a respectful tenderness at that moment. He felt quite ready to sacrifice his aunt—conversationally; to acknowledge she was a proud rude woman and to make the point that they needn’t mind her. But before he had time to commit himself to this questionable mixture of gallantry and impiety, the young lady, resuming her walk, gave an exclamation in quite another tone. “Well, here’s mother! I guess she hasn’t got Randolph to go to bed.” The figure of a lady appeared, at a distance, very indistinct in the darkness; it advanced with a slow and wavering step and then suddenly seemed to pause.

  “Are you sure it’s your mother? Can you make her out in this thick dusk?” Winterbourne asked.

  “Well,” the girl laughed, “I guess I know my own mother! And when she has got on my shawl too. She’s always wearing my things.”

  The lady in question, ceasing now to approach, hovered vaguely about the spot at which she had checked her steps.

  “I’m afraid your mother doesn’t see you,” said Winterbourne. “Or perhaps,” he added—thinking, with Miss Miller, the joke permissible—“perhaps she feels guilty about your shawl.”

  “Oh it’s a fearful old thing!” his companion placidly answered. “I told her she could wear it if she didn’t mind looking like a fright. She won’t come here because she sees you.”

  “Ah then,” said Winterbourne, “I had better leave you.”

  “Oh no—come on!” the girl insisted.

  “I’m afraid your mother doesn’t approve of my walking with you.”

  She gave him, he thought, the oddest glance. “It isn’t for me; it’s for you—that is it’s for her. Well, I don’t know who it’s for! But mother doesn’t like any of my gentlemen friends. She’s right down timid. She always makes a fuss if I introduce a gentleman. But I do introduce them—almost always. If I didn’t introduce my gentlemen friends to mother,” Miss Miller added, in her small flat monotone, “I shouldn’t think I was natural.”

  “Well, to introduce me,” Winterbourne remarked, “you must know my name.” And he proceeded to pronounce it.

  “Oh my—I can’t say all that!” cried his companion, much amused. But by this time they had come up to Mrs. Miller, who, as they drew near, walked to the parapet of the garden and leaned on it, looking intently at the lake and presenting her back to them. “Mother!” said the girl in a tone of decision—upon which the elder lady turned round. “Mr. Frederick Forsyth Winterbourne,” said the latter’s young friend, repeating his lesson of a moment before and introducing him very frankly and prettily. “Common” she might be, as Mrs. Costello had pronounced her; yet what provision was made by that epithet for her queer little native grace?

  Her mother was a small spare light person, with a wandering eye, a scarce perceptible nose, and, as to make up for it, an unmistakeable forehead, decorated—but too far back, as Winterbourne mentally described it—with thin much-frizzled hair. Like her daughter Mrs. Miller was dressed with extreme elegance; she had enormous diamonds in her ears. So far as the young man could observe, she gave him no greeting—she certainly wasn’t looking at him. Daisy was near her, pulling her shawl straight. “What are you doing, poking round here?” this young lady enquired—yet by no means with the harshness of accent her choice of words might have implied.

  “Well, I don’t know”—and the new-comer turned to the lake again.

  “I shouldn’t think you’d want that shawl!” Daisy familiarly proceeded.

  “Well—I do!” her mother answered with a sound that partook for Winterbourne of an odd strain between mirth and woe.

  “Did you get Randolph to go to bed?” Daisy asked.

  “No, I couldn’t induce him”—and Mrs. Miller seemed to confess to the same mild fatalism as her daughter. “He wants to talk to the waiter. He likes to talk to that waiter.”

  “I was just telling Mr. Winterbourne,” the girl went on; and to the young man’s ear her tone might have indicated that she had been uttering his name all her life.

  “Oh yes!” he concurred—“I’ve the pleasure of knowing your son.”

  Randolph’s mamma was silent; she kept her attention on the lake. But at last a sigh broke from her. “Well, I don’t see how he lives!”

  “Anyhow, it isn’t so bad as it was at Dover,” Daisy at least opined.

  “And what occurred at Dover?” Winterbourne desired to know.

  “He wouldn’t go to bed at all. I guess he sat up all night—in the public parlour. He wasn’t in bed at twelve o’clock: it seemed as if he couldn’t budge.”

  “It was half-past twelve when I gave up,” Mrs. Miller recorded with passionless accuracy.

  It was of great interest to Winterbourne. “Does he sleep much during the day?”

  “I guess he doesn’t sleep very much,” Daisy rejoined.

  “I wish he just would!” said her mother. “It seems as if he must make it up somehow.”

  “Well, I guess it’s we that make it up. I think he’s real tiresome,” Daisy pursued.

  After which, for some moments, there was silence.

  “Well, Daisy Miller,” the elder lady then unexpectedly broke out, “I shouldn’t think you’d want to talk against your own brother!”

  “Well, he is tiresome, mother,” said the girl, but with no sharpness of insistence.

  “Well, he’s only nine,” Mrs. Miller lucidly urged.

  “Well, he wouldn’t go up to that castle, anyway,” her daughter replied as for accommodation. “I’m going up there with Mr. Winterbourne.”

  To this announcement, very placidly made, Daisy’s parent offered no response. Winterbourne took for granted on this that she opposed such a course; but he said to himself at the same time that she was a simple easily-managed person and that a few deferential protestations would modify her attitude. “Yes,” he therefore interposed, “your daughter has kindly allowed me the honour of being her guide.”

  Mrs. Miller’s wandering eyes attached themselves with an appealing air to her other companion, who, however, strolled a few steps further, gently humming to herself. “I presume you’ll go in the cars,” she then quite colourlessly remarked.

  “Yes, or in the boat,” said Winterbourne.

  “Well, of course I don’t know,” Mrs. Miller returned. “I’ve never been up to that castle.”

  “It is a pity you shouldn’t go,” he observed, beginning to feel reassured as to her opposition. And yet he was quite prepared to find that as a matter of course she meant to accompany her daughter.

  It was on this view accordingly that light was projected for him. “We’ve been thinking ever so much about going, but it seems as if we couldn’t. Of course Daisy—she wants to go round everywhere. But there’s a lady here—I don’t know her name—she says she shouldn’t think we’d want to go to see castles here; she should think we’d want to wait till we got t’ Italy. It seems as if there would be so many there,” continued Mrs. Miller with an air of increasing confidence. “Of course we only want to see the principal ones. We visited several in England,” she presently added.

  “Ah yes, in England there are beautiful castles,” said Winterbourne. “But Chillon here is very well worth seeing.”

  “Well, if Daisy feels up to it—” said Mrs. Miller in a tone that seemed to break under the burden of such conceptions. “It seems as if there’s nothing she won’t undertake.”

  “Oh I’m pretty sure she’ll enjoy it!” Winterbourne declared. And he desired more and more to make it a certainty that he was to have the privilege of a tête-à-tête with the young lady who was still strolling along in front of them and softly vocalising. “You’re not disposed, madam,” he enquired, “to make the so interesting excursion yourself?”

  So addressed Daisy’s mother looked at him an instant with a certain scared obliquity and then walked forward in silence. Then, “I guess she had better go alone,” she said simply.

  It gave him occasion to note that this was a very different type of maternity from that of the vigilant matrons who massed themselves in the forefront of social intercourse in the dark old city at the other end of the lake. But his meditations were interrupted by hearing his name very distinctly pronounced by Mrs. Miller’s unprotected daughter. “Mr. Winterbourne!” she piped from a considerable distance.

  “Mademoiselle!” said the young man.

  “Don’t you want to take me out in a boat?”

  “At present?” he asked.

  “Why of course!” she gaily returned.

  “Well, Annie Miller!” exclaimed her mother.

  “I beg you, madam, to let her go,” he hereupon eagerly pleaded; so instantly had he been struck with the romantic side of this chance to guide through the summer starlight a skiff freighted with a fresh and beautiful young girl.

  “I shouldn’t think she’d want to,” said her mother. “I should think she’d rather go indoors.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Winterbourne wants to take me,” Daisy declared. “He’s so awfully devoted!”

  “I’ll row you over to Chillon under the stars.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Daisy laughed.

  “Well!” the elder lady again gasped, as in rebuke of this freedom.

  “You haven’t spoken to me for half an hour,” her daughter went on.

  “I’ve been having some very pleasant conversation with your mother,” Winterbourne replied.

  “Oh pshaw! I want you to take me out in a boat!” Daisy went on as if nothing else had been said. They had all stopped and she had turned round and was looking at her friend. Her face wore a charming smile, her pretty eyes gleamed in the darkness, she swung her great fan about. No, he felt, it was impossible to be prettier than that.

  “There are half a dozen boats moored at that landing-place,” and he pointed to a range of steps that descended from the garden to the lake. “If you’ll do me the honour to accept my arm we’ll go and select one of them.”

  She stood there smiling; she threw back her head; she laughed as for the drollery of this. “I like a gentleman to be formal!”

  “I assure you it’s a formal offer.”

  “I was bound I’d make you say something,” Daisy agreeably mocked.

  “You see it’s not very difficult,” said Winterbourne. “But I’m afraid you’re chaffing me.”

  “I think not, sir,” Mrs. Miller shyly pleaded.

  “Do then let me give you a row,” he persisted to Daisy.

  “It’s quite lovely, the way you say that!” she cried in reward.

  “It will be still more lovely to do it.”

  “Yes, it would be lovely!” But she made no movement to accompany him; she only remained an elegant image of free light irony.

  “I guess you’d better find out what time it is,” her mother impartially contributed.

  “It’s eleven o’clock, Madam,” said a voice with a foreign accent out of the neighbouring darkness; and Winterbourne, turning, recognised the florid personage he had already seen in attendance. He had apparently just approached.

  “Oh Eugenio,” said Daisy, “I’m going out with Mr. Winterbourne in a boat!”

  Eugenio bowed. “At this hour of the night, Mademoiselle?”

  “I’m going with Mr. Winterbourne,” she repeated with her shining smile. “I’m going this very minute.”

  “Do tell her she can’t, Eugenio,” Mrs. Miller said to the courier.

  “I think you had better not go out in a boat, Mademoiselle,” the man declared.

  Winterbourne wished to goodness this pretty girl were not on such familiar terms with her courier; but he said nothing, and she meanwhile added to his ground. “I suppose you don’t think it’s proper! My!” she wailed; “Eugenio doesn’t think anything’s proper.”

  “I’m nevertheless quite at your service,” Winterbourne hastened to remark.

  “Does Mademoiselle propose to go alone?” Eugenio asked of Mrs. Miller.

  “Oh no, with this gentleman!” cried Daisy’s mamma for reassurance.

  “I meant alone with the gentleman.” The courier looked for a moment at Winterbourne—the latter seemed to make out in his face a vague presumptuous intelligence as at the expense of their companions—and then solemnly and with a bow, “As Mademoiselle pleases!” he said.

  But Daisy broke off at this. “Oh I hoped you’d make a fuss! I don’t care to go now.”

  “Ah but I myself shall make a fuss if you don’t go,” Winterbourne declared with spirit.

  “That’s all I want—a little fuss!” With which she began to laugh again.

  “Mr. Randolph has retired for the night!” the courier hereupon importantly announced.

  “Oh Daisy, now we can go then!” cried Mrs. Miller.

  Her daughter turned away from their friend, all lighted with her odd perversity. “Good-night—I hope you’re disappointed or disgusted or something!”

  He looked at her gravely, taking her by the hand she offered. “I’m puzzled, if you want to know!” 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’s eyes followed them; he was indeed quite mystified. He lingered beside the lake a quarter of an hour, baffled by the question of the 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.