No sooner had he done it than he recollected the impropriety of such conduct. He released her at once, and said, rather pale, and with the laugh quite vanished from his eyes: “I’m sorry! Forgive me!”
Eustacie said earnestly: “Oh, I did not mind at all! Besides, you kissed me before, do you not remember?”
“Oh, that!” he said. “That was a mere cousinly kiss!”
“And this one, not?” she said simply. “I am glad.”
He ran his hand through his fair locks. “I’m a villain to have kissed you at all! Forget that I did! I had no right—I ought to be shot for doing such a thing!”
Eustacie stared at him in the blankest surprise. “ Voyons, I find that you are excessively rude! I thought you wanted to kiss me!”
“Of course I wanted to! Oh, devil take it, this won’t do! Eustacie, if everything were different: if I were not a smuggler and an exile I should beg you to marry me. But I am these things, and—”
“I do not mind about that,” she interrupted. “It is not at all convenable that you should kiss me and then refuse to marry me. I am quite mortified.”
“I wish to God I could ask you to marry me!”
“It doesn’t signify,” said Eustacie, handsomely waiving this formality. “If it is against your honour you need not make me an offer. We will just be betrothed without it.”