And then, in Paris, she felt like a stranger and an intruder.

The _Parisiennes_ were tight-laced, artificial women, who had a peculiar way of walking; and Gaud was too intelligent even to have attempted to imitate them.

In her head-dress, ordered every year from the maker in Paimpol, she felt out of her element in the capital; and did not understand that if the wayfarers turned round to look at her, it was only because she made a very charming picture.
Some of these Parisian ladies quite won her by their high-bred and distinguished manners, but she knew them to be inaccessible to her, while from others of a lower caste who would have been glad to make friends with her, she kept proudly aloof, judging them unworthy of her attention.

Thus she had lived almost without friends, without other society than her father's, who was engaged in business and often away.
So she did not regret that life of estrangement and solitude.
But, none the less, on that day of arrival she had been painfully surprised by the bitterness of this Brittany, seen in full winter.

And her heart sickened at the thought of having to travel another five or six hours in a jolting car--to penetrate still farther into the blank, desolate country to reach Paimpol.
All through the afternoon of that same grisly day, her father and herself had journeyed in a little old ramshackle vehicle, open to all the winds; passing, with the falling night, through dull villages, under ghostly trees, black-pearled with mist in drops.