The father, Robert Smeath, had found it more and more
difficult to earn anything on which to keep his belongings, and as a
picture dealer seemed to have fallen into bad odour with the Italian
authorities, for reasons of which Netta could give no account.
"And how much do you think Mr. Melrose allowed his wife and child?" asked
Victoria, her eyes sparkling. "_Eighty pounds a year_!--on which in the
end the whole family seem to have lived. Finally, the mother died, and
Mr. Smeath got into some scrape or other--I naturally avoided the
particulars--which involved pledging half Mrs. Melrose's allowance for
five years. And on the rest--forty pounds--she and her daughter, and her
old father have been trying to live for the last two. You never heard
such a story! They found a small half-ruined villa in the mountains north
of Pisa, and there they somehow existed. They couldn't afford nursing or
doctoring for the old father; they were half starved; the mother and
daughter have both actually worked in the vineyards; and, of course, they
had no servant. You should see the poor woman's hands! Then she began to
write to her husband. No reply--for eighteen months, no reply--till just
lately, an intimation from the Florentine bank, that if any more similar
letters were addressed to Mr. Melrose the allowance would be stopped."
"Old fiend!" cried Tatham, "now we'll get at him!"
Victoria went on to describe how, at last, an English family who had
taken one of the old villas on the Luccan Alps for the summer had come
across the forlorn trio.
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