A few tall, mustached Frenchmen, with cigars in their mouths; a German or two with the inevitable pipe; a few students returning from foreign universities; a few pedestrian tourists with hobnailed shoes, preposterous alpenstocks, and a proudly displayed Bradshaw or Murray; several stout and puffy Englishmen, with singularly pale faces, and the usual number of rotund ill-dressed English women, with flimsy muslin dresses and fur tippets in odd contrast--a conjunction much affected by the average British lady--made up the majority of the passengers. Some of these people walked about, affecting to enjoy the fresh breeze; others studied the now useless guide-book, recalling their adventures; and others scanned the blue shores of France alternately with the chalk cliffs of England through the tourist glasses slung from their shoulders, and wondered aloud if the passage would be accomplished in the usual ninety minutes. An odd feature of a Channel packet is the total disregard of appearances manifested by the passengers upon it. Very few, if any, persons go below into the stuffy little cabins, and doubting souls provide themselves with ominous white bowls at the outset of the voyage, and should illness come upon them they proceed to make themselves comfortable upon the deck, or moan, or swear, according to the sex of the sufferer, totally unmindful and oblivious of lookers on. In a corner by herself, at one side of the boat, her thick green vail over her face shrouding a bowl that filled her lap, sat Artress, Lady Wynde’s gray companion, in a condition of abject misery. She had no thought of any one but herself in that crisis of her physical career, and gave no heed to her young charge, the one great desire of her soul being to find herself once more upon solid land. At the opposite side of the boat, leaning lightly upon the rail, and looking back with wistful, longing eyes upon the fading blue of the French shores, stood a young girl who was strangely lovely. She was slender and graceful as a swaying reed, and her lithe, light figure carried itself with a slight hauteur that was inexpressibly charming. Her high-bred manner, her evident gentleness and sweetness, betrayed thorough culture of heart and mind. Her face was a rare poem. The features were slightly irregular, and even in repose, with a grave shadow upon her fair brows, her countenance had a bright, piquant witchery. Her complexion was very pure and fair, her lips a vivid scarlet, and under her broad forehead a pair of wondrous red-brown eyes sparkled and glowed with strange brilliancy. Her hair, very abundant, and of a reddish-brown tint as rare as beautiful, was gathered into braids at the back of her small, noble head. She was dressed in a traveling suit of black cashmere, and wore a black hat surmounted with a scarlet wing.