When he returned to his room he had a sudden return of his dreadful nervous malady and barked and whined under the bed.
Then Vandover wrote a fifty-dollar check on the bank--the same bank that had just notified him that he was overdrawn--and passed it upon young Haight.

How he came to do the thing he could not tell; it might have been the influence of Geary's successful robbery, or it might have been that he had at last lost all principle, all sense of honour and integrity.

At any rate, he could not bring himself to feel very sorry.
He knew that young Haight would not prosecute him for the dishonesty; he traded upon Haight's magnanimity; he only felt glad that he had the fifty dollars.

But by this time Vandover did not even wonder at his own baseness and degradation.

A few years ago this would have been the case; now his character was so changed that the theft seemed somehow consistent.