about something else. But a few
moments later, when he was pointing out to her the pretty design of an
antique fireplace, she broke out irrelevantly, "You don't mean to say
you are going back to Geneva?"

"It is a melancholy fact that I shall have to return to Geneva
tomorrow."

"Well, Mr. Winterbourne," said Daisy, "I think you're horrid!"

"Oh, don't say such dreadful things!" said Winterbourne--"just at the
last!"

"The last!" cried the young girl; "I call it the first. I have 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 honor to be so agitated by the announcement of his movements. His
companion, after this, ceased to pay any attention to the curiosities of
Chillon or the beauties of the lake; she opened fire upon the mysterious
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 that there was a charmer 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 frankness of her persiflage. She seemed to him, in all this, an
extraordinary mixture of innocence and crudity. "Does she never allow
you more than three days at a time?" asked Daisy ironically. "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 after you in the boat. Do wait over
till Friday, and I will go down to the landing to see her arrive!"
Winterbourne began to think he had been wrong to feel disappointed in
the temper in which the young lady had embarked. If he had missed the
personal accent, the personal accent was now making its appearance.
It sounded very distinctly, at last, in her telling him she would stop
"teasing" him if he would promise her solemnly to come down to Rome in
the winter.

"That's not a difficult promise to make," said Winterbourne. "My aunt
has taken an apartment in Rome for the winter 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 to
come for me." And this was the only allusion that the young man was ever
to hear her make to his invidious kins