Damned if you do, damned if you don't? So, there's this book I'm reading. Written in the mid 1880's but set around 1850. A wealthy young Viscount falls in love with a rich Count's daughter.

But there's this other girl, an innocent peasant girl who hasn't been around the block. The Viscount seems interested in her (just because she looks hot- but she's not marriage material for obvious reasons) and tries to follow her home. When the Viscount is injured, he is taken to HER home, just by coincidence. As she nurses him back to health, his horndog tendencies come to the surface and he kisses her. She doesn't have a boyfriend and only understands "love" in a familial sense.

But the author seems to keep making excuses for him!

Like this:

"The more [he] saw of her the more he came under the dominion of her irresistible charms, the empire of her physical attractiveness."

"She, moreover, lured and inflamed him in such a careless, innocent way that she acquired additional piquancy thereby."

"[She] was a pure and innocent creature, unused to the ways of the world and incapable of suspecting the wickedness of men. She was on the point of falling into a deadly snare, on the point of being wrecked upon the most dangerous shoal life presented. Her very purity and innocence would make her an easy victim. [He] was not wicked; he was merely young, the prey of the irresistible passion of youth. [Her] surpassing loveliness had fired his blood [...]"

Does this sound like the "Boys will be boys" type of attitude?

And how this this all end? Not very well (for her). She gets kidnapped and raped by bandits. He gets accused of the crime, but he's innocent. He's supposed to be the "good guy" of the story! The bandits free the girl, she runs home, but knows her life is ruined/over, so she goes to a "Convent for Fallen Women" and becomes a nun.

And for our young Viscount Horndog? After being exonerated, he gets permission to marry the (other) Count's daughter. They have a BIG wedding. Yay???