Read "A Damaged Reputation" by Harold Bindloss online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The Pacific express had just come in, and the C. P. R. wharf at Vancouver was thronged with a hurrying crowd when Barbara Heathcote and her sister stood leaning upon the rails of the S. S. _Islander_. Beneath them the big locomotive which had hauled the dusty cars over the wild Selkirk passes was crawling slowly down the wharf with bell tolling dolefully, and while a feathery steam roared aloft above the tiers of white deckhouses a stream of passengers flowed up the gangway. Barbara, who was crossing to Victoria, watched them languidly until an elaborately-dressed woman ascended, leaning upon the arm of a man whose fastidious neatness of attire and air of indifference to the confusion about him proclaimed him an Englishman. She made a very slight inclination when the woman smiled at her.
"It is fortunate she can't very well get at us here," she said, glancing at the pile of baggage which cut them off from the rest of the deck. "Three or four hours of Mrs. Coulson's conversation would be a good deal more than I could appreciate."