The harsh judgment of youth--of youth that never tries to understand, that never makes allowances--softened under the influence of Charley's reprehensible charm.

Even badness, Gabriella conceded grudgingly, might be easier to live with in some circumstances than a too exalted self-righteousness.
"If you'll bring Jane to that way of thinking," retorted Charley, with vulgar frankness, "I'll give you five hundred dollars down.

If you'll thoroughly corrupt her mind and persuade her to neglect her duty to me, I'll make it a thousand." He was jesting! It was monstrous, with Jane lying ill in her mother's room; it was indecent; it was grossly immoral; but he was actually jesting! Not even scandal, not even the doctor's presence in the house, could suppress his incorrigible spirit of levity.

"If I were Jane, I'd never speak to him," thought Gabriella, and the question flashed through her mind, "how in the world could she ever have loved him ?" It was impossible for her to conceive of any situation when Charley could have made a girl fall in love with him.

Though she had heard stories of his early conquests, she had never believed them.