Georgina and her companions arrived at the Hotel de Flandres in Calais on 23 September 1889 at one o’clock in the morning. Letters from home informed her that Angèle had been seen sitting on a doorstep in Gower Street. ‘Oh! What will she do when she hears how she has been sold, and me flown!’ Georgina gloated. After a week in Calais they all moved on to an apartment in Boulogne, where Georgina walked on the sands with the dogs and remembered Crow, with whom she had been there thirty-four years earlier. On 21 October they reached their final destination, the hospice at Gisors where the nuns gave them ‘a kind welcome’. There had been no time to make long-term plans and it is not clear how long Georgina intended to stay. The hospice was a refuge, where she could recover from the trauma of the disintegration of her relationship with Angèle and the collapse of her dreams and ambitions. It was to be her home for the next six years and an occasional retreat for a further eight.

Regular reports came from London. Lise Gray wrote that she had met Angèle, who vowed that she would ‘spare no pains’ to ruin Georgina, threatening to take her to court to recover money that she was allegedly owed. Nothing ever came of this; Georgina never heard from Angèle again. Titley, Faithfull and the others had been busy packing up Georgina's belongings, and twenty-eight boxes and cases duly arrived at the hospice. Georgina busied herself unpacking them and settling in. As a paying boarder, she occupied a comfortable suite of five rooms opening off a corridor at the top of the building.

The Hospice of St Thomas de Villeneuve stood in a large garden bounded on one side by the River Epte, a tributary of the Seine. There was also a farmyard, and the nuns kept cows and chickens. It was not long before Georgina persuaded the mother superior to let her have a piece of land of her own; she eventually took over half the garden. She concentrated most of her efforts on growing fruit and vegetables, but there were flowers as well. Keeping the garden going was ‘perfect slavery’.