Before we come to the dark story of that night in the inn, it is but fair to Frances to say that she came there with no definite evil purpose.

She had been cheerful on her journey from Munich.

There was one clear fact in her brain: She was on her way to George.
The countless toy farms of southern France, trimmed neatly by the inch, swept past her.

In Brittany came melancholy stretches of brown heath and rain-beaten hills; or great affluent estates, the Manor houses covered with thatch, stagnant pools close to the doors, the cattle breaking through the slovenly wattled walls.
Frances, being a farmer, felt a vague amusement at these things, but they were all dim to her as a faded landscape hanging on the wall.
She was going to George.
Sometimes she seemed to be in Lucy's room again, with the sweet, clean air of youth about her.

All of that purity and love might have gone into George's life--before it fell into the slough.
But she was going now to take it out of the slough.
There was a merchant and his wife from Geneva in the carriage with their little boy, a pretty child of five.