"Sophy, you don't know--what
I've done!"
"You haven't done anything that can't be undone," said I,
comfortably. "You and I, my dear, fell into a Hynds House maze. Now
we're out of it!" And thinking she would be better by herself, I
kissed her good night.
Out of Hynds House maze, indeed! I had only to step back into my own
room to have it again enmesh me. For on the prie-dieu that had once
held Freeman Hynds's Bible and now held mine, was the lost diary.
CHAPTER XIII
FIRES OF YESTERDAY
I wasn't frightened, of course. There isn't anything terrifying in
finding a little old leather-covered book on a prie-dieu by one's
bedside. But it was some minutes before I could induce myself to
take up that yellowed old diary and examine it.
It begins the year of Freeman's return from college, "a Finish'd
Young Gentleman." He has refused to go abroad, considering that "our
Young Gentlemen have enough Fripperies & Fopperies at Home without
bringing worse Ones from Abroad." Brother Richard has been abroad
more than once, and Freeman does not "find him Improv'd save in
Outer Elegancies."
The only person that "much Travelling hath not Spoil'd," he finds,
is Mistress Emily Hope of Hope Plantation.
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