But she still remained on at
Jansen, saying always, however, that she was "going East in the spring."
Five years had passed, and still she had not gone East, but remained
perched in the rooms she had first taken, over the Imperial Bank, while
the town grew up swiftly round her. And even when the young bank manager
married, and wished to take over the rooms, she sent him to the right-
about from his own premises in her gay, masterful way. The young manager
behaved well in the circumstances, because he had asked her to marry him,
and she had dismissed him with a warning against challenging his own
happiness--that was the way she had put it. Perhaps he was galled the
less because others had striven for the same prize, and had been thrust
back, with an almost tender misgiving as to their sense of self-
preservation and sanity. Some of them were eligible enough, and all were
of some position in the West. Yet she smiled them firmly away, to the
wonder of Jansen, and to its satisfaction, for was it not a tribute to
all that she would distinguish no particular unit by her permanent
favour? But for one so sprightly and almost frivolous in manner at
times, the self-denial seemed incongruous.
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