In the meantime, but unconsciously, he threw some light on Charnock's vacillating character.
When he stopped Helen mused for a few minutes.

Although she had got a shock when Charnock gave her up, she knew her lover better than when she had promised to marry him.

He came home once in the winter and she had remarked a change.

Bob was not altogether the man she had thought; there were things that jarred, and his letters gradually made this plainer.
Still she had meant to keep her promise, and his withdrawal hurt.

She had borne something for his sake, because her mother and her relations had not approved the engagement.