The active little lawyer returned to London that very afternoon.
Weeks passed over after this. Mr. Chicknell wrote several letters, but they contained but little intelligence.
At last one came which was more cheering. The Italian professor and his wife had been traced first to London, where they had lived some months, and in all probability had spent what little ready money they had. From the metropolis the Italian had gone to Leeds, where he earnt a living by teaching. He and his wife had taken lodgings in that city, and there a child was born.
From what could be gathered it would appear that Montini found it a hard task to maintain a lady brought up in the lap of luxury, and the young couple had to submit to a number of privations.
There were persons residing in Leeds who remembered both the professor and his young English wife.
Indeed, some of the Italian’s pupils, now grown up to middle-aged people, attested to the fact that Montini’s wife presented her husband with a little girl, and the register of her birth and baptism was obtained in the town.
Matters, therefore, looked a little more promising, and the old earl watched for the post each day with the greatest anxiety.
From Leeds they went to Harrogate. In this place they were supposed to be struggling for some time in adverse circumstances, and while there the professor became seriously ill—so bad indeed that his life was despaired of.
A doctor who attended him, and who still practised in this fashionable watering-place, gave a very sorry account of the Italian’s health, which, he said, was much broken while Montini was under his care. His impression, at the time, was that he could not live more than three or four years.
Mr. Chicknell, in his letters to the earl, informed the latter of all these facts; at the same time he expressed his sincere regret that there did not seem to be much chance of obtaining more information, as the clue seemed to be lost after the professor and his wife left Harrogate.