"But you will scarcely have the pleasure of seeing him in it. Waldemar will certainly never bend the knee to any lady, and least of all to you."
"Least of all to me!" repeated Wanda, in an offended tone. "Ah, yes! you think me such a child that no man would think of falling on his knees to me. I have a great mind to prove the contrary to you."
"How--by making Waldemar kneel to you?" The young girl gave him a defiant glance. "And supposing I really try to bring him to that pass?"
"Try your power over my brother as you like," said Leo, pettishly; "you may learn to duly estimate its extent."
Wanda sprang up with the eagerness of a child delighted with a new plaything.
"It is a bargain," she said; "what shall the wager be?"
"But it must be a genuine falling upon the knees, not a mere act of politeness, like that which just now brought me to your feet."
"Of course. You keep laughing. Do you consider such a thing impossible? I shall win the wager. You will see Waldemar on his knees to me before we leave this place. I make only one condition: you are to give him no hint of this transaction. His bearish nature would be aroused if he should learn that we had presumed to make his formidable self the object of a wager."
"You may rely upon my silence," Leo answered, beginning to enter into the joke, and to share Wanda's confidence in its success. "But he will be furious if you finally reject him and the truth dawns upon him. Or do you intend to say Yes?"
And so these two children of sixteen and eighteen years laughed and jested over the idea of the fine joke they were about to play upon Waldemar. Presumptuous, thoughtless children! They were so accustomed to each other's jests that they felt no compunction at drawing a third party into their sport. They did not at all consider how little the rough, intense nature of Waldemar was adapted to such foolery, and into what terrible earnest he might turn this joke, concocted in their mischievous and frivolous young heads.