Read "A Prairie Courtship" by Harold Bindloss online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Florence Hunter had lately returned from Toronto and was sitting on the veranda toward the middle of the afternoon in an unusually thoughtful mood. Among other reasons for this, there was the fact that she had spent a good deal of money while she was away, and she was far from sure that she had received its full value. Most of the people she had met in Toronto appeared to be endued with irritatingly respectable, old-fashioned views, and as a result of it they could not be induced to forget that she was a married woman separated for a few weeks from a self-sacrificing husband. Indeed, one or two of them went so far as to condole with her for his absence, and their general attitude imposed on her an unwelcome restraint. There was certainly one exception, but this man had no tact, and the lady who stood sponsor for her openly frowned at his too marked devotion, while some of the others laughed.
Florence at length got rid of him summarily, and then half regretted it when nobody else aspired to fill his place.