The Protector by Harold Bindloss

Vane spent two or three weeks very pleasantly in Vancouver, for Evelyn, of whom he saw a good deal, was gracious to him. The embarrassment both had felt on their first meeting in the Western city had speedily vanished; they had resumed their acquaintance on what was ostensibly a purely friendly footing, and, since both avoided any reference to what had taken place in England, it had ripened into a mutual confidence.

This would have been less probable in the older country, where they would have been continually reminded of what the Chisholm family had expected of them; but the past seldom counts for much in the new and changeful West, whose inhabitants look forward to the future. Indeed, there is something in its atmosphere which banishes regret and retrospection; and when Evelyn looked back at all, she felt inclined to wonder why she had once been so troubled by the man's satisfaction with her company. She decided that this could not have been the result of any aversion from him, and that it was merely an instinctive revolt against the part her parents had wished to force upon her. Chisholm and his wife had blundered as such people often do, for it is possible that had they adopted a perfectly neutral attitude everything would have gone as they desired.