"Waldemar? Yes, indeed; but you will hardly have that satisfaction. He will never bend the knee before a lady, certainly not before you."
"Certainly not before me!" repeated Wanda, in a tone of pique. "Oh, you think I am still such a child, it is not worth while kneeling to me. I have a great mind to prove to you the contrary."
"How?" asked Leo, laughing. "By bringing Waldemar to your feet, perhaps?"
The girl pouted. "And suppose I undertook to do it?"
"Well, try your power on my brother, if you like," said he, touchily. "Perhaps that will give you a better notion of what you can do, and what you can't."
Wanda sprang up with the eagerness of a child who sees a new toy before it.
"I agree. What shall we wager?"
"But it must be done in earnest, Wanda. It must not be a mere act of politeness, like mine just now."
"Of course not," assented the young Countess. "You laugh; you think such a thing is quite beyond the range of possibility. Well, we shall see who wins. You shall behold Waldemar on his knees before we leave. I only make one condition; you must give him no hint of it. I think it would rouse all the bear in him if he were to hear we had presumed to make his lordship the object of a wager."
"I won't say a word," declared Leo, carried away by her mischievous eagerness, and joining in the frolic. "We shan't escape an outburst of his Berserker wrath, though, when you laugh out at him at last, and tell him the truth. But perhaps you mean to say yes?"