About the middle of December, Alma Frothingham left England, burning with a fever of impatience, resenting all inquiry and counsel, making pretence of settled plans, really indifferent to everything but the prospect of emancipation.

The disaster that had befallen her life, the dishonour darkening upon her name, seemed for the moment merely a price paid for liberty.

The shock of sorrow and dismay had broken innumerable bonds, overthrown all manner of obstacles to growth of character, of power.

She gloried in a new, intoxicating sense of irresponsibility.
She saw the ideal life in a release from all duty and obligation--save to herself.
Travellers on that winter day from Antwerp into Germany noticed the English girl, well dressed, and of attractive features, whose excited countenance and restless manner told of a journey in haste, with something most important, and assuredly not disagreeable, at the end of it.

She was alone, and evidently quite able to take care of herself.
Unlike the representative English _Fraulein_, she did not reject friendly overtures from strangers; her German was lame, but she spoke it with enjoyment, laughing at her stumbles and mistakes.