Only the heave of her bosom betrayed the agitation under which she was labouring.
"Whether you give me the right or not, I intend to take it," he insisted.
"You are very rude," she reproved him.
He laughed.

"Even at the risk of being rude, then.

I must make myself clear to you.

I would suffer anything sooner than leave you under any misapprehension of the grounds upon which I should have preferred to face a firing party rather than have been rescued at the sacrifice of your good name." "I hope," she said, with faint but cutting irony, "you do not intend to offer me the reparation of marriage." It took his breath away for a moment.

It was a solution that in his confused and irate state of mind he had never even paused to consider.
Yet now that it was put to him in this scornfully reproachful manner he perceived not only that it was the only possible course, but also that on that very account it might be considered by her impossible.
Her testiness was suddenly plain to him.