She was so different, they felt, from the other specimens of femininity of their acquaintance to whom their weak attentions had sometimes proved acceptable.

There was something almost imperious in Elizabeth's manner at times that made them feel quite small beside her; and however careless she might be of the _convenances_ in her way of speaking to them, they had very soon found that wherever she chose to draw the line, so far could they go and no farther.
Madame Garvloit would take her to task sometimes for the scant courtesy with which she treated the young clerk.

Elizabeth would answer that he bored her; and Madame Garvloit would insist that a young girl ought to have tact enough not to make this evident.

Elizabeth, however, was not deficient in tact, but disliked putting a restraint upon her feelings; and it seemed to her on the whole unreasonable that a person should pretend that a thing was pleasant when in reality it was wearisome.
During the second autumn of her service with the Garvloits, the skipper, on his return from a trip to Norway, brought the intelligence that Lieutenant Beck was engaged to Postmaster Forstberg's daughter in Arendal, and he had many messages for Elizabeth from the latter.

They were to be married in the spring.
Elizabeth was overjoyed to hear it, for the thought had often weighed heavily on her mind that Carl Beck might be making himself miserable on her account.