"By heavens! I detest him as my worst sins, but I cannot challenge him."
Upon this Bona started up and demanded with a look of scorn and contempt, "Do you want the courage for it?"
"Only you dare ask me that," replied Rasselwitz, starting up in his turn; "and to you only could I give a cool answer. I have never shunned the game of swords; but my knightly word binds me; I pledged it to the prince palatine on the settling of that awkward business the other day, and, if the monster does not begin again himself, he will have quiet for me as long as he lives."
"Does not then the wish of your beloved weigh more with you than this promise?" asked Bona in soul-melting tones; and, laying her hand upon his shoulder, she gazed on him with a look that glowed through his pulses and gave wings to them.
"You have not understood me, noble lady," replied Rasselwitz earnestly. "We are talking here of my knightly word, on which depends my honour, and consequently my earthly being. If this adamantine chain were to hold no longer, what tie in the world could be relied on?"
"A clever brain would know how to manage a quarrel, and yet throw the appearance of the first aggression upon his adversary. Rough and violent as this Friend appears to me, it must be easy to irritate him to unseemly language and vulgar action, and then you fight only in self-defence, which the bishop cannot take amiss."
"That would be bad work, lady, with which I cannot meddle. To evade a promise is to break a promise, and I am an honourable Silesian."
"Well answered," cried Bona with loud laughter, and reseated herself. "Take your place again by my side, Herr von Rasselwitz; it was not so evilly intended. I excuse you from the combat for life and death, to which you seem to have so little inclination, and do you, on the other hand, excuse me for the future from your love-protests which you cannot prove. You have stood the first trial badly; I spare you the others."
"How! Your strange instigation was no more than a trial?"
"And a very badly contrived one too. How could I expect that you would believe me, in this deadly hatred against a man whom I saw to-day for the first time in my life, and who could not have ever injured me?--me, a Netherlandress, who have lived but a few weeks at Schweidnitz? You would have caught me finely, and put me into an awkward plight, had you made as if you were willing to comply with my desire. I must then have prayed you, for God's sake, to let poor Friend live, and you would have had the pleasure of laughing at me soundly for my unsuccessful project."