Notwithstanding all this confidence, only two days later I had this note, dated from his house off Piccadilly: 

Dear Sir,—­I have returned disappointed.  If I should feel at all able to see you, I shall write to ask you kindly to call.  At present, I am too low, and, in fact, simply unable to say all I wish to say.  Pray don’t mention my name to my friends.  I can see no one.  By-and-by, please God, you shall hear from me.  I mean to take a run into Shropshire, where some of my people are.  God bless you!  May we, on my return, meet more happily than I can now write.

About a week after this I saw Lady Mary at her own house, the last person, she said, left in town, and just on the wing for Brighton, for the London season was quite over.  She told me that she had heard from Mr. Jenning’s niece, Martha, in Shropshire.  There was nothing to be gathered from her letter, more than that he was low and nervous.  In those words, of which healthy people think so lightly, what a world of suffering is sometimes hidden!

Nearly five weeks had passed without any further news of Mr. Jennings.  At the end of that time I received a note from him.  He wrote: 

“I have been in the country, and have had change of air, change of scene, change of faces, change of everything—­and in everything—­but myself.  I have made up my mind, so far as the most irresolute creature on earth can do it, to tell my case fully to you.  If your engagements will permit, pray come to me to-day, to-morrow, or the next day; but, pray defer as little as possible.  You know not how much I need help.  I have a quiet house at Richmond, where I now am.  Perhaps you can manage to come to dinner, or to luncheon, or even to tea.  You shall have no trouble in finding me out.  The servant at Blank Street, who takes this note, will have a carriage at your door at any hour you please; and I am always to be found.  You will say that I ought not to be alone.  I have tried everything.  Come and see.”

I called up the servant, and decided on going out the same evening, which accordingly I did.

He would have been much better in a lodging-house, or hotel, I thought, as I drove up through a short double row of sombre elms to a very old-fashioned brick house, darkened by the foliage of these trees, which overtopped, and nearly surrounded it.  It was a perverse choice, for nothing could be imagined more triste and silent.  The house, I found, belonged to him.  He had stayed for a day or two in town, and, finding it for some cause insupportable, had come out here, probably because being furnished and his own, he was relieved of the thought and delay of selection, by coming here.

The sun had already set, and the red reflected light of the western sky illuminated the scene with the peculiar effect with which we are all familiar.  The hall seemed very dark, but, getting to the back drawing-room, whose windows command the west, I was again in the same dusky light.