It was the last of "Old England," and she knew that much time must elapse before she would see the shores of her birthplace again.

What would greet her in the foreign country to which she was going?
New sights, new sounds, new interests--perhaps new friends?
The thought of it all was an exhilaration.

Others might seem sad at a break with former associations, but as for herself she was starting a fresh life, and she meant to get every scrap of enjoyment out of it that was practically possible.
The stewardess had prophesied correctly when she described the voyage as "choppy." The steamer certainly pitched and tossed in a most uncomfortable fashion, and it was only owing to the comparative steadiness of her seat amidships that Irene escaped that most wretched of complaints, _mal de mer_.

She sat very still, with rather white cheeks, and refused Vincent's offers of biscuits and chocolates: her sole salvation, indeed, was not to look at the heaving sea, but to keep her eyes fixed upon the magazine which she made a pretense of reading.
Fortunately the Dover-Calais crossing is short, and, before Neptune had claimed her as one of his victims, they were once more in smooth waters and steaming into harbor.
Then again the kaleidoscope turned, and the crowd of passengers remingled and walked over gangways, and along platforms and up steep steps, and jostled through the Customs, and said "_Rien a declarer_" to the officials, who peeped inside their bags to find tea or tobacco, and had their luggage duly chalked, and showed their passports once more, and finally, after a bewildering half-hour of bustle and hustle, found themselves, with all their belongings intact, safely in the train for Paris.

Irene had caught brief glimpses of the child whom she named "Little Flaxen," whose mother, in a state of collapse, had been almost carried off the vessel, but revived when she was on dry land again: a maid was in close attendance, and two porters were stowing their piles of hand-luggage inside a specially reserved compartment.