For the first time in all
his years, he found himself able to trace his own life back to its
source, as other men do. A flying trip to New York, and two hours with
Tim Queed, had answered all questions, cleared up all doubts. First of
all, it had satisfied him that there was no stain upon his birth.
Surface's second marriage had been clandestine, but it was genuine; in
Newark the young man found the old clergyman who had officiated at the
ceremony. His mother, it seemed, had been Miss Floretta May Earle, a
"handsome young opery singer," of a group, so Tim said, to which the
gentleman, his father, had been very fond of giving his "riskay little
bacheldore parties."
Tim's story, in fact, was comprehensive at all points. He had been Mr.
Surface's coachman and favorite servant in the heyday of the Southern
apostate's metropolitan glories. About a year before the final
catastrophe, Surface's affairs being then in a shaky condition, the
servants had been dismissed, the handsome house sold, and the financier,
in a desperate effort to save himself, had moved off somewhere to modest
quarters in a side street.
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