trusted Jane--no, not a minute; she had never really trusted her mother.
Something had told her that Jane had never meant in her heart to leave
Charley, that she was only making a scene, after the immemorial habit of
women, before going back to him. And yet, though she had suspected this
all along, she was as indignant as if she had been deceived by a
conspiracy of the three of them. Her sense of decency was outraged. She
despised Jane because she had no strength of character; but even while
this thought was still in her mind, she admitted that Jane had had
sufficient strength of character to upset the household, bring Charley
to repentance, and emerge, faint but victorious, from the wreck of
their peace. Yes, she despised Jane, though it was impossible to deny
that Jane's methods were successful, since she had got what she wanted.

The street was very quiet, for it was in the small gray hours between
midnight and dawn, and a solitary policeman, strolling by on his beat,
appeared as wan and spectral as the bare boughs of the poplar trees
beneath which he moved. The wind was still blowing over the brow of the
hill, and now and then it tossed a wisp of straw or a handful of dust on
the porch where Gabriella was standing. As it swept onward it drove a
flock of shadows, like black birds, up the open street into the clear
space under the old-fashioned gas lamp at the corner. All the lights
were out in the neighbouring houses, but from a boarding-house down the
block there floated suddenly the gay snatch of a waltz played on a banjo
with a broken string. Then the music stopped, the policeman passed, and
Gabriella and the wind were alone in the street. Overhead the stars
shone dimly through a web of mist; and it seemed to her that the sadness
of the sky and the sadness of the earth had mingled there in the long
straight street where the wind blew with a melancholy sound between rows
of silent and darkened houses.