"I?" he asked, sharply. "I have had very little to do with poetry--as you know, Countess Morynska."
"Yes, I know," she answered, in the same tone; "but there are moments when it forces itself upon one."
"It may be so with romantic natures. People of my sort have to learn to push through life without either romance or poetry. The years must be endured and lived through one way or another."
"How calmly you say that! Mere patient endurance was not exactly your forte formerly. I think you are wonderfully changed in that respect."
"Oh, one does not always remain a passionate, hot-headed boy! But perhaps you think I can never get the better of my old childish follies."
Wanda bit her lips. He had shown her very plainly that he could get the better of them. "I do not doubt it," she said, coldly. "I give you credit for much that you do not see fit to show openly."
Waldemar became attentive. For one moment he looked keenly, scrutinisingly at the young lady, and then replied quietly--
"In that case you set yourself in opposition to all Wilicza. People here are unanimous in declaring me a most inoffensive person."
"Because you wish to pass for such. I do not believe it."
"You are very good to ascribe a most unmerited importance to me," said Waldemar, ironically; "but it is cruel of you to deprive me of the single advantage I possess in the eyes of my mother and brother, that of being harmless and insignificant."
"If my aunt could hear the tone in which you say that, she would alter her opinion," declared Wanda, irritated by his sarcasm. "For the present, I am certainly alone in mine."
"And so you will continue," said Nordeck. "The world sees in me an indefatigable sportsman; perhaps, after the trial of day, it may vouch me a skilful rider--nothing more."
"Are you really bent on sport, Herr Nordeck, all these long days while you are roaming about with your gun and game bag?" asked the young lady, fixing a keen look on him.
"And on what else might I be bent, according to your notion?"
"I do not know, but I fancy you are inspecting your Wilicza, inspecting it closely. There is not a forester's station, not a village, not a farm, however distant from your property, which you have not visited. You have even called at the farms leased out to the different tenants, and you will no doubt soon be as much at home everywhere else as you already are in your mother's drawing-room. You appear there but seldom, it is true, and play the part of an indifferent bystander; yet nothing of what is going on, no word or look, escapes you. You seem to bestow but little notice on our visitors; yet there is not one of them who has not had to pass muster before you and on whom you have not pronounced your verdict."