Was it right for him to wake Jane and disturb the house at this hour, causing her, perhaps, a sleepless night, or should he wait until the morning, when he could break the news to her in a more gentle and less sensational way?
While he sat thus wondering, undetermined whether to drive lightly out of the gate again or to push forward in the hope that someone would be awake, his mind unconsciously reverted to the figure of Jane making her way with weary steps down the gangplank of the steamer, the two years of her suffering deep cut into every line of her face.

He recalled the shock her appearance had given him, and his perplexity over the cause.
He remembered her refusal to give him her promise, her begging him to wait, her unaccountable moods since her return.
Then Lucy's face came before him, her whole career, in fact (in a flash, as a drowning man's life is pictured), from the first night after her return from school until he had bade her good-by to take the train for Trenton.

Little scraps of talk sounded in his ears, and certain expressions about the corners of her eyes revealed themselves to his memory.

He thought of her selfishness, of her love of pleasure, of her disregard of Jane's wishes, of her recklessness.
Everything was clear now.
"What a fool I have been!" he said to himself.

"What a fool--FOOL! I ought to have known!" Next the magnitude of the atonement, and the cruelty and cowardice of the woman who had put her sister into so false a position swept over him.