mokes."

Winterbourne listened with interest to these disclosures; they helped
him to make up his mind about Miss Daisy. Evidently she was rather wild.
"Well," he said, "I am not a courier, and yet she was very charming to
me."

"You had better have said at first," said Mrs. Costello with dignity,
"that you had made her acquaintance."

"We simply met in the garden, and we talked a bit."

"Tout bonnement! And pray what did you say?"

"I said I should take the liberty of introducing her to my admirable
aunt."

"I am much obliged to you."

"It was to guarantee my respectability," said Winterbourne.

"And pray who is to guarantee hers?"

"Ah, you are cruel!" said the young man. "She's a very nice young girl."

"You don't say that as if you believed it," Mrs. Costello observed.

"She is completely uncultivated," Winterbourne went on. "But she is
wonderfully pretty, and, in short, she is very nice. To prove that I
believe it, I am going to take her to the Chateau de Chillon."

"You two are going off there together? I should say it proved just the
contrary. How long had you known her, may I ask, when this interesting
project was formed? You haven't been twenty-four hours in the house."

"I have known her half an hour!" said Winterbourne, smiling.

"Dear me!" cried Mrs. Costello. "What a dreadful girl!"

Her nephew was silent for some moments. "You really think, then," he
began earnestly, and with a desire for trustworthy information--"you
really think that--" But he paused again.

"Think what, sir?" said his aunt.

"That she is the sort of young lady who expects a man, sooner or later,
to carry her off?"

"I haven't the least idea what such young ladies expect a man to do. But
I really think that you had better not meddle with little American girls
that are uncultivated, as you call them. You have lived too long out of
the country. You will be sure to make some great mistake. You are too
innocent."

"My dear aunt, I am not so innocent," said Winterbourne, smiling and
curling his mustache.

"You are guilty too, then!"

Winterbourne continued to curl his mustache meditatively. "You won't let
the poor girl know you then?" he asked at last.

"Is it literally true that she is going to the Chateau de Chillon with
you?"

"I think that she fully intends it."

"Then, my dear Frederick," said Mrs. Costello, "I must decline the honor
of her acquaintance. I am an old woman, but I am not too old, thank
Heave