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.
"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.