Two days later 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 wasn’t the place he would have chosen for a tryst, but she had placidly appointed it. She came tripping downstairs, buttoning her long gloves, squeezing her folded parasol against her pretty figure, dressed exactly in the way that consorted best, to his fancy, with their adventure. He was a man of imagination and, as our ancestors used to say, of sensibility; as he took in her charming air and caught from the great staircase her impatient confiding step the note of some small sweet strain of romance, not intense but clear and sweet, seemed to sound for their start. He could have believed he was really going “off” with her. He led her out through all the idle people assembled—they all looked at her straight and hard: she had begun to chatter as soon as she joined him. His 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—there would be such a lovely breeze upon the water and they should see such lots of people. The sail wasn’t long, but Winterbourne’s companion found time for many characteristic remarks and other demonstrations, not a few of which were, from the extremity of their candour, slightly disconcerting. To the young man himself their small excursion showed so far delightfully irregular and incongruously intimate that, even allowing for her habitual sense of freedom, he had some expectation of seeing her appear to find in it the same savour. But it must be confessed that he was in this particular rather disappointed. Miss Miller was highly animated, she was in the brightest spirits; but she was clearly not at all in a nervous flutter—as she should have been to match his tension; she avoided neither his eyes nor those of any one else; she neither coloured from an awkward consciousness when she looked at him nor when she saw that people were looking at herself. People continued to look at her a great deal, and Winterbourne could at least take pleasure in his pretty companion’s distinguished air. He had been privately afraid she would talk loud, laugh overmuch, and even perhaps desire to move extravagantly about the boat. But he quite forgot his fears; he sat smiling with his eyes on her face while, without stirring from her place, she delivered herself of a great number of original reflexions. It was the most charming innocent prattle he had ever heard, for, by his own experience hitherto, when young persons were so ingenuous they were less articulate and when they were so confident were more sophisticated. If he had assented to the idea that she was “common,” at any rate, was she proving so, after all, or was he simply getting used to her commonness? Her discourse was for the most part of what immediately and superficially surrounded them, but there were moments when it threw out a longer look or took a sudden straight plunge.

  “What on earth are you so solemn about?” she suddenly demanded, fixing her agreeable eyes on her friend’s.

  “Am I solemn?” he asked. “I had an idea I was grinning from ear to ear.”

  “You look as if you were taking me to a prayer-meeting or 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,” Winterbourne returned.

  She looked at him a moment, then let it renew her amusement. “I like to make you say those things. You’re a queer mixture!”

  In the castle, after they had landed, nothing could exceed the light independence of her humour. She 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 oubliettes3 and turned a singularly well-shaped ear to everything Winterbourne told her about the place. But he saw she cared little for mediæval history and that the grim ghosts of Chillon loomed but faintly before her. They had the good fortune to have been able to wander without other society than that of their guide; and Winterbourne arranged with this companion that they shouldn’t be hurried—that they should linger and pause wherever they chose. He interpreted the bargain generously—Winterbourne on his side had been generous—and ended by leaving them quite to themselves. Miss Miller’s observations were marked by no logical consistency; for anything she wanted to say she was sure to find a pretext. She found a great many, in the tortuous passages and rugged embrasures of the place, for asking her young man sudden questions about himself, his family, his previous history, his tastes, his habits, his designs, and for supplying information on corresponding points in her own situation. Of her own tastes, habits and designs the charming creature was prepared to give the most definite and indeed the most favourable account.

  “Well, I hope you know enough!” she exclaimed after Winterbourne had sketched for her something of the story of the unhappy Bonnivard.4 “I never saw a man that knew so much!” The history of Bonnivard had evidently, as they say, gone into one ear and out of the other. But this easy erudition struck her none the less as wonderful, and she was soon quite sure she wished Winterbourne would travel with them and “go round” with them: they too in that case might learn something about something. “Don’t you want to come and teach Randolph?” she asked; “I guess he’d improve with a gentleman teacher.” Winterbourne was certain that nothing could possibly please him so much, but that he had unfortunately other occupations. “Other occupations? I don’t believe a speck of it!” she protested. “What do you mean now? You’re not in business.” The young man allowed that he was not in business, but he had engagements which even within a day or two would necessitate his return to Geneva. “Oh bother!” she panted, “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 interesting design of an antique fireplace, she broke out irrelevantly: “You don’t mean to say you’re going back to Geneva?”

  “It is a melancholy fact that I shall have to report myself there to-morrow.”

  She met it with a vivacity that could only flatter him. “Well, Mr. Winterbourne, I think you’re horrid!”

  “Oh don’t say such dreadful things!” he quite sincerely pleaded—“just at the last.”

  “The last?” the girl cried; “I call it the very first! I’ve 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 honour to be so agitated by the mention of his personal plans. His companion, after this, ceased to pay any attention to the curiosities of Chillon or the beauties of the lake; she opened fire on the special charmer in Geneva whom she appeared to have instantly taken it for granted that he was hurrying back to see. How did Miss Daisy Miller know of that agent of his fate in Geneva? Winterbourne, who denied the existence of such a person, was quite unable to discover; and he was divided between amazement at the rapidity of her induction and amusement at the directness of her criticism. She struck him afresh, in all this, as an extraordinary mixture of innocence and crudity. “Does she never allow you more than three days at a time?” Miss Miller wished ironically to know. “Doesn’t she give you a vacation in summer? there’s no one so hard-worked but they can get leave to go off somewhere at this season. I suppose if you stay another day she’ll come right after you in the boat. Do wait over till Friday and I’ll go down to the landing to see her arrive!” He began at last even to feel he had been wrong to be disappointed in the temper in which his young lady had embarked. If he had missed the personal accent, the personal accent was now making its appearance. It sounded very distinctly, toward the end, in her telling him she’d stop “teasing” him if he’d promise her solemnly to come down to Rome that winter.

  “That’s not a difficult promise to make,” he hastened to acknowledge. “My aunt has taken an apartment in Rome from January and has already asked me to come and see her.”

  “I don’t want you to come for your aunt,” said Daisy; “I want you just to come for me.” And this was the only allusion he was ever to hear her make again to his invidious kinswoman. He promised her that at any rate he would certainly come, and after this she forbore from teasing. Winterbourne took a carriage and they drove back to Vevey in the dusk; the girl at his side, her animation a little spent, was now quite distractingly passive.

  In the evening he mentioned to Mrs. Costello that he had spent the afternoon at Chillon with Miss Daisy Miller.

  “The Americans—of the courier?” asked this lady.

  “Ah happily the courier stayed at home.”

  “She went with you all alone?”

  “All alone.”

  Mrs. Costello sniffed a little at her smelling-bottle. “And that,” she exclaimed, “is the little abomination you wanted me to know!”

  III

  Winterbourne, who had returned to Geneva the day after his excursion to Chillon, went to Rome toward the end of January. His aunt had been established there a considerable time and he had received from her a couple of characteristic letters. “Those people you were so devoted to last summer at Vevey have turned up here, courier and all,” she wrote. “They seem to have made several acquaintances, but the courier continues to be the most intime. The young lady, however, is also very intimate with various third-rate Italians, with whom she rackets about in a way that makes much talk. Bring me that pretty novel of Cherbuliez’s—‘Paule Méré’1—and don’t come later than the 23d.”

  Our friend would in the natural course of events, on arriving in Rome, have presently ascertained Mrs. Miller’s address at the American banker’s and gone to pay his compliments to Miss Daisy. “After what happened at Vevey I certainly think I may call upon them,” he said to Mrs. Costello.

  “If after what happens—at Vevey and everywhere—you desire to keep up the acquaintance, you’re very welcome. Of course you’re not squeamish—a man may know every one. Men are welcome to the privilege!”

  “Pray what is it then that ‘happens’—here for instance?” Winterbourne asked.

  “Well, the girl tears about alone with her unmistakeably low foreigners. As to what happens further you must apply elsewhere for information. She has picked up half a dozen of the regular Roman fortune-hunters of the inferior sort and she takes them about to such houses as she may put her nose into. When she comes to a party—such a party as she can come to—she brings with her a gentleman with a good deal of manner and a wonderful moustache.”

  “And where’s the mother?”

  “I haven’t the least idea. They’re very dreadful people.”

  Winterbourne thought them over in these new lights. “They’re very ignorant—very innocent only, and utterly uncivilised. Depend on it they’re not ‘bad.’ ”

  “They’re hopelessly vulgar,” said Mrs. Costello. “Whether or no being hopelessly vulgar is being ‘bad’ is a question for the metaphysicians. They’re bad enough to blush for, at any rate; and for this short life that’s quite enough.”

  The news that his little friend the child of nature of the Swiss lakeside was now surrounded by half a dozen wonderful moustaches checked Winterbourne’s impulse to go straightway to see her. He had perhaps not definitely flattered himself that he had made an ineffaceable impression upon her heart, but he was annoyed at hearing of a state of affairs so little in harmony with an image that had lately flitted in and out of his own meditations; the image of a very pretty girl looking out of an old Roman window and asking herself urgently when Mr. Winterbourne would arrive. If, however, he determined to wait a little before reminding this young lady of his claim to her faithful remembrance, he called with more promptitude on two or three other friends. One of these friends was an American lady who had spent several winters at Geneva, where she had placed her children at school. She was a very accomplished woman and she lived in Via Gregoriana. Winterbourne found her in a little crimson drawing-room on a third floor; the room was filled with southern sunshine. He hadn’t been there ten minutes when the servant, appearing in the doorway, announced complacently “Madame Mila!” This announcement was presently followed by the entrance of little Randolph Miller, who stopped in the middle of the room and stood staring at Winterbourne. An instant later his pretty sister crossed the threshold; and then, after a considerable interval, the parent of the pair slowly advanced.

  “I guess I know you!” Randolph broke ground without delay.

  “I’m sure you know a great many things”—and his old friend clutched him all interestedly by the arm. “How’s your education coming on?”

  Daisy was engaged in some pretty babble with her hostess, but when she heard Winterbourne’s voice she quickly turned her head with a “Well, I declare!” which he met smiling. “I told you I should come, you know.”

  “Well, I didn’t believe it,” she answered.

  “I’m much obliged to you for that,” laughed the young man.

  “You might have come to see me then,” Daisy went on as if they had parted the week before.

  “I arrived only yesterday.”

  “I don’t believe any such thing!” the girl declared afresh.

  Winterbourne turned with a protesting smile to her mother, but this lady evaded his glance and, seating herself, fixed her eyes on her son. “We’ve got a bigger place than this,” Randolph hereupon broke out. “It’s all gold on the walls.”

  Mrs. Miller, more of a fatalist apparently than ever, turned uneasily in her chair. “I told you if I was to bring you you’d say something!” she stated as for the benefit of such of the company as might hear it.

  “I told you!” Randolph retorted. “I tell you, sir!” he added jocosely, giving Winterbourne a thump on the knee. “It is bigger too!”

  As Daisy’s conversation with her hostess still occupied her Winterbourne judged it becoming to address a few words to her mother—such as “I hope you’ve been well since we parted at Vevey.”

  Mrs. Miller now certainly looked at him—at his chin. “Not very well, sir,” she answered.

  “She’s got the dyspepsia,” said Randolph. “I’ve got it too. Father’s got it bad. But I’ve got it worst!”

  This proclamation, instead of embarrassing Mrs. Miller, seemed to soothe her by reconstituting the environment to which she was most accustomed. “I suffer from the liver,” she amiably whined to Winterbourne. “I think it’s this climate; it’s less bracing than Schenectady, especially in the winter season. I don’t know whether you know we reside at Schenectady. I was saying to Daisy that I certainly hadn’t found any one like Dr. Davis and I didn’t believe I would. Oh up in Schenectady, he stands first; they think everything of Dr. Davis. He has so much to do, and yet there was nothing he wouldn’t do for me. He said he never saw anything like my dyspepsia, but he was bound to get at it. I’m sure there was nothing he wouldn’t try, and I didn’t care what he did to me if he only brought me relief. He was just going to try something new, and I just longed for it, when we came right off. Mr. Miller felt as if he wanted Daisy to see Europe for herself. But I couldn’t help writing the other day that I supposed it was all right for Daisy, but that I didn’t know as I could get on much longer without Dr. Davis. At Schenectady he stands at the very top; and there’s a great deal of sickness there too. It affects my sleep.”

  Winterbourne had a good deal of pathological gossip with Dr. Davis’s patient, during which Daisy chattered unremittingly to her own companion. The young man asked Mrs. Miller how she was pleased with Rome. “Well, I must say I’m disappointed,” she confessed. “We had heard so much about it—I suppose we had heard too much. But we couldn’t help that. We had been led to expect something different.”

  Winterbourne, however, abounded in reassurance. “Ah wait a little, and you’ll grow very fond of it.”

  “I hate it worse and worse every day!” cried Randolph.

  “You’re like the infant Hannibal,”2 his friend laughed.

  “No I ain’t—like any infant!” Randolph declared at a venture.

  “Well, that’s so—and you never were!” his mother concurred. “But we’ve seen places,” she resumed, “that I’d put a long way ahead of Rome.” And in reply to Winterbourne’s interrogation, “There’s Zurich—up there in the mountains,” she instanced; “I think Zurich’s real lovely, and we hadn’t heard half so much about it.”

  “The best place we’ve seen’s the City of Richmond!” said Randolph.

  “He means the ship,” Mrs. Miller explained. “We crossed in that ship. Randolph had a good time on the City of Richmond.”

  “It’s the best place I’ve struck,” the child repeated. “Only it was turned the wrong way.”

  “Well, we’ve got to turn the right way sometime,” said Mrs. Miller with strained but weak optimism. Winterbourne expressed the hope that her daughter at least appreciated the so various interest of Rome, and she declared with some spirit that Daisy was quite carried away. “It’s on account of the society—the society’s splendid. She goes round everywhere; she has made a great number of acquaintances. Of course she goes round more than I do. I must say they’ve all been very sweet—they’ve taken her right in. And then she knows a great many gentlemen. Oh she thinks there’s nothing like Rome. Of course it’s a great deal pleasanter for a young lady if she knows plenty of gentlemen.”

  By this time Daisy had turned her attention again to Winterbourne, but in quite the same free form. “I’ve been telling Mrs. Walker how mean you were!”

  “And what’s the evidence you’ve offered?” he asked, a trifle disconcerted, for all his superior gallantry, by her inadequate measure of the zeal of an admirer who on his way down to Rome had stopped neither at Bologna nor at Florence, simply because of a certain sweet appeal to his fond fancy, not to say to his finest curiosity. He remembered how a cynical compatriot had once told him that American women—the pretty ones, and this gave a largeness to the axiom—were at once the most exacting in the world and the least endowed with a sense of indebtedness.