The Carlings went away some ten days later, and she did, in fact, send another note to his house address, asking him to see them before their departure; but John had considered himself fortunate in getting the house off his hands to a tenant who would assume the lease if given possession at once, and had gone into the modest apartment which he occupied during the rest of his life in the city, and so the second communication failed to reach him.

Perhaps it was as well.

Some weeks later he walked up to the Carlings' house one Sunday afternoon, and saw that it was closed, as he had expected.

By an impulse which was not part of his original intention--which was, indeed, pretty nearly aimless--he was moved to ring the doorbell; but the maid, a stranger to him, who opened the door could tell him nothing of the family's whereabouts, and Mr.Betts (the house man in charge) was "hout." So John retraced his steps with a feeling of disappointment wholly disproportionate to his hopes or expectations so far as he had defined them to himself, and never went back again.
* * * * * He has never had much to say of the months that followed.
It came to be the last of October.

An errand from the office had sent him to General Wolsey, of the Mutual Trust Company, of whom mention has been made by David Harum.