“Isn’t it just at the centre,” she interrupted, “that you keep remarkably5 still, and only in the suburbs that you feel the rage? I count on dear Theign’s doing nothing in the least foolish —!”
“Ah, but he can’t have chucked everything for nothing,” Lord John sharply returned; “and wherever you place him in the rumpus he can’t not meet somehow, hang it, such an assault on his character as a great nobleman and good citizen.”
“It’s his luck to have become with the public of the newspapers the scapegoat-inchief: for the sins, so-called, of a lot of people!” Lady Sandgate inconclusively sighed.
“Yes,” Lord John concluded for her, “the mercenary millions on whose traffic in their trumpery6 values — when they’re so lucky as to have any! — this isn’t a patch!”
“Oh, there are cases and cases: situations and responsibilities so intensely differ!”— that appeared on the whole, for her ladyship, the moral to be gathered.
“Of course everything differs, all round, from everything,” Lord John went on; “and who in the world knows anything of his own case but the victim of circumstances exposing himself, for the highest and purest motives7, to be literally8 torn to pieces?”
“Well,” said Lady Sandgate as, in her strained suspense9, she freshly consulted her bracelet10 watch, “I hope he isn’t already torn — if you tell me you’ve been to Kitty’s.”
“Oh, he was all right so far: he had arrived and gone out again,” the young man explained, “as Lady Imber hadn’t been at home.”
“Ah cool Kitty!” his hostess sighed again — but diverted, as she spoke11, by the reappearance of her butler, this time positively12 preceding Lord Theign, whom she met, when he presently stood before her, his garb13 of travel exchanged for consummate14 afternoon dress, with yearning15 tenderness and compassionate16 curiosity. “At last, dearest friend — what a joy! But with Kitty not at home to receive you?”
That young woman’s parent made light of it for the indulged creature’s sake. “Oh I knew my Kitty! I dressed and I find her at five-thirty.” To which he added as he only took in further, without expression, Lord John: “But Bender, who came there before my arrival — he hasn’t tried for me here?”
It was a point on which Lord John himself could at least be expressive18. “I met him at the club at luncheon19; he had had your letter — but for which chance, my dear man, I should have known nothing. You’ll see him all right at this house; but I’m glad, if I may say so, Theign,” the speaker pursued with some emphasis —“I’m glad, you know, to get hold of you first.”
Lord Theign seemed about to ask for the meaning of this remark, but his other companion’s apprehension20 had already overflowed21. “You haven’t come back, have you — to whatever it may be! — for trouble of any sort with Breckenridge?”
His lordship transferred his penetration22 to this fair friend, “Have you become so intensely absorbed — these remarkable23 days! — in ‘Breckenridge’?”
She felt the shadow, you would have seen, of his claimed right, or at least privilege, of search — yet easily, after an instant, emerged clear. “I’ve thought and dreamt but of you — suspicious man! — in proportion as the clamour has spread; and Mr. Bender meanwhile, if you want to know, hasn’t been near me once!”
Lord John came in a manner, and however unconsciously, to her aid. “You’d have seen, if he had been, what’s the matter with him, I think — and what perhaps Theign has seen from his own letter: since,” he went on to his fellow-visitor, “I understood him a week ago to have been much taken up with writing you.”
Lord Theign received this without comment, only again with an air of expertly sounding the speaker; after which he gave himself afresh for a moment to Lady Sandgate. “I’ve not come home for any clamour, as you surely know me well enough to believe; or to notice for a minute the cheapest insolence24 and aggression25 — which frankly26 scarce reached me out there; or which, so far as it did, I was daily washed clean of by those blest waters. I returned on Mr. Bender’s letter,” he then vouchsafed27 to Lord John —“three extraordinarily28 vulgar pages about the egregious29 Pap-pendick!”
“About his having suddenly turned up in person, yes, and, as Breckenridge says, marked the picture down?”— the young man was clearly all-knowing. “That has of course weighed on Bender — being confirmed apparently30, on the whole, by the drift of public opinion.”
Lord Theign took, on this, with a frank show of reaction from some of his friend’s terms, a sharp turn off; he even ironically indicated the babbler or at least the blunderer in question to Lady Sandgate. “He too has known me so long, and he comes here to talk to me of ‘the drift of public opinion’!” After which he quite charged at his vain informant. “Am I to tell you again that I snap my fingers at the drift of public opinion? — which is but another name for the chatter31 of all the fools one doesn’t know, in addition to all those (and plenty of ’em!) one damnably does.”
Lady Sandgate, by a turn of the hand, dropped oil from her golden cruse. “Ah, you did that, in your own grand way, before you went abroad!”
“I don’t speak of the matter, my dear man, in the light of its effect on you,” Lord John importantly explained —“but in the light of its effect on Bender; who so consumedly wants the picture, if he is to have it, to be a Mantovano, but seems unable to get it taken at last for anything but the fine old Moretto that of course it has always been.”
Lord Theign, in growing disgust at the whole beastly complication, betrayed more and more the odd pitch of the temper that had abruptly32 restored him with such incalculable weight to the scene of action. “Well, isn’t a fine old Moretto good enough for him; confound him?”
It pulled up not a little Lord John, who yet made his point. “A fine old Moretto, you know, was exactly what he declined at Dedborough — for its comparative, strictly33 comparative, insignificance34; and he only thought of the picture when the wind began to rise for the enormous rarity —”
“That that mendacious35 young cad who has bamboozled36 Grace,” Lord Theign broke in, “tried to befool us, for his beggarly reasons, into claiming for it?”
Lady Sandgate renewed her mild influence. “Ah, the knowing people haven’t had their last word — the possible Mantovano isn’t exploded yet!” Her noble friend, however, declined the offered spell. “I’ve had enough of the knowing people — the knowing people are serpents! My picture’s to take or to leave — and it’s what I’ve come back, if you please, John, to say to your man to his face.”
This declaration had a report as sharp and almost as multiplied as the successive cracks of a discharged revolver; yet when the light smoke cleared Lady Sand-gate at least was still left standing37 and smiling. “Yes, why in mercy’s name can’t he choose which? — and why does he write him, dreadful Breckenridge, such tiresome38 argumentative letters?”
Lord John took up her idea as with the air of something that had been working in him rather vehemently39, though under due caution too, as a consequence of this exchange, during which he had apprehensively40 watched his elder. “I don’t think I quite see how, my dear Theign, the poor chap’s letter was so offensive.”
In that case his dear Theign could tell him. “Because it was a tissue of expressions that may pass current — over counters and in awful newspapers — in his extraordinary world or country, but that I decline to take time to puzzle out here.”
“If he didn’t make himself understood,” Lord John took leave to laugh, “it must indeed have been an unusual production for Bender.”
“Oh, I often, with the wild beauty, if you will, of so many of his turns, haven’t a notion,” Lady Sandgate confessed with an equal gaiety, “of what he’s talking about.”
“I think I never miss his weird41 sense,” her younger guest again loyally contended —“and in fact as a general thing I rather like it!”
“I happen to like nothing that I don’t enjoy,” Lord Theign rejoined with some asperity42 —“and so far as I do follow the fellow he assumes on my part an interest in his expenditure43 of purchase-money that I neither feel nor pretend to. He doesn’t want — by what I spell out — the picture he refused at Dedborough; he may possibly want — if one reads it so — the picture on view in Bond Street; and he yet appears to make, with great emphasis, the stupid ambiguous point that these two ‘articles’ (the greatest of Morettos an ‘article’!) haven’t been ‘by now’ proved different: as if I engaged with him that I myself would so prove them!”
Lord John indulged in a pause — but also in a suggestion. “He must allude44 to your hoping — when you allowed us to place the picture with Mackintosh — that it would show to all London in the most precious light conceivable.”
“Well, if it hasn’t so shown”— and Lord Theign stared as if mystified —“what in the world’s the meaning of this preposterous45 racket?”
“The racket is largely,” his young friend explained, “the vociferation of the people who contradict each other about it.”
On which their hostess sought to enliven the gravity of the question. “Some — yes — shouting on the housetops that’s a Mantovano of the Mantovanos, and others shrieking46 back at them that they’re donkeys if not criminals.”
“He may take it for whatever he likes,” said Lord Theign, heedless of these contributions, “he may father it on Michael Angelo himself if he’ll but clear out with it and let me alone!”
“What he’d like to take it for,” Lord John at this point saw his way to remark, “is something in the nature of a Hundred Thousand.”
“A Hundred Thousand?” cried his astonished friend.
“Quite, I dare say, a Hundred Thousand”— the young man enjoyed clearly handling even by the lips so round a sum.
Lady Sandgate disclaimed however with agility47 any appearance of having gaped48. “Why, haven’t you yet realised, Theign, that those are the American figures?”
His lordship looked at her fixedly49 and then did the same by Lord John, after which he waited a little. “I’ve nothing to do with the American figures — which seem to me, if you press me, you know, quite intolerably vulgar.”
“Well, I’d be as vulgar as anybody for a Hundred Thousand!” Lady Sandgate hastened to proclaim.
“Didn’t he let us know at Dedborough,” Lord John asked of the master of that seat, “that he had no use, as he said, for lower values?”
“I’ve heard him remark myself,” said their companion, rising to the monstrous50 memory, “that he wouldn’t take a cheap picture — even though a ‘handsome’ one — as a present.”
“And does he call the thing round the corner a cheap picture?” the proprietor51 of the work demanded.
Lord John threw up his arms with a grin of impatience52. “All he wants to do, don’t you see? is to prevent your making it one!”
Lord Theign glared at this imputation53 to him of a low ductility54. “I offered the thing, as it was, at an estimate worthy55 of it — and of me.”
“My dear reckless friend,” his young adviser56 protested, “you named no figure at all when it came to the point ——!”
“It didn’t come to the point! Nothing came to the point but that I put a Moretto on view; as a thing, yes, perfectly57”— Lord Theign accepted the reminding gesture —“on which a rich American had an eye and in which he had, so to speak, an interest. That was what I wanted, and so we left it — parting each of us ready but neither of us bound.”
“Ah, Mr. Bender’s bound, as he’d say,” Lady Sand-gate interposed —”‘bound’ to make you swallow the enormous luscious58 plum that your appetite so morbidly59 rejects!”
“My appetite, as morbid60 as you like”— her old friend had shrewdly turned on her —“is my own affair, and if the fellow must deal in enormities I warn him to carry them elsewhere!”
Lord John, plainly, by this time, was quite exasperated61 at the absurdity62 of him. “But how can’t you see that it’s only a plum, as she says, for a plum and an eye for an eye — since the picture itself, with this huge ventilation, is now quite a different affair?”
“How the deuce a different affair when just what the man himself confesses is that, in spite of all the chatter of the prigs and pedants63, there’s no really established ground for treating it as anything but the same?” On which, as having so unanswerably spoken, Lord Theign shook himself free again, in his high petulance64, and moved restlessly to where the passage to the other room appeared to offer his nerves an issue; all moreover to the effect of suggesting to us that something still other than what he had said might meanwhile work in him behind and beneath that quantity. The spectators of his trouble watched him, for the time, in uncertainty65 and with a mute but associated comment on the perversity66 and oddity he had so suddenly developed; Lord John giving a shrug67 of almost bored despair and Lady Sandgate signalling caution and tact68 for their action by a finger flourished to her lips, and in fact at once proceeding69 to apply these arts. The subject of her attention had still remained as in worried thought; he had even mechanically taken up a book from a table — which he then, after an absent glance at it, tossed down.
“You’re so detached from reality, you adorable dreamer,” she began —“and unless you stick to that you might as well have done nothing. What you call the pedantry70 and priggishness and all the rest of it is exactly what poor Breckenridge asked almost on his knees, wonderful man, to be allowed to pay you for; since even if the meddlers and chatterers haven’t settled anything for those who know — though which of the elect themselves after all does seem to know? — it’s a great service rendered him to have started such a hare to run!”
Lord John took freedom to throw off very much the same idea. “Certainly his connection with the whole question and agitation71 makes no end for his glory.”
It didn’t, that remark, bring their friend back to him, but it at least made his indifference72 flash with derision. “His ‘glory’— Mr. Bender’s glory? Why, they quite universally loathe73 him — judging by the stuff they print!”
“Oh, here — as a corrupter74 of our morals and a promoter of our decay, even though so many are flat on their faces to him — yes! But it’s another affair over there where the eagle screams like a thousand steam-whistles and the newspapers flap like the leaves of the forest: there he’ll be, if you’ll only let him, the biggest thing going; since sound, in that air, seems to mean size, and size to be all that counts. If he said of the thing, as you recognise,” Lord John went on, “‘It’s going to be a Mantovano,’ why you can bet your life that it is — that it has got to be some kind of a one.”
His fellow-guest, at this, drew nearer again, irritated, you would have been sure, by the unconscious infelicity of the pair — worked up to something quite openly wilful75 and passionate17. “No kind of a furious flaunting76 one, under my patronage77, that I can prevent, my boy! The Dedborough picture in the market — owing to horrid78 little circumstances that regard myself alone — is the Dedborough picture at a decent, sufficient, civilised Dedborough price, and nothing else whatever; which I beg you will take as my last word on the subject.”
Lord John, trying whether he could take it, momentarily mingled79 his hushed state with that of their hostess, to whom he addressed a helpless look; after which, however, he appeared to find that he could only reassert himself. “May I nevertheless reply that I think you’ll not be able to prevent anything? — since the discussed object will completely escape your control in New York!”
“And almost any discussed object”— Lady Sand-gate rose to the occasion also —“is in New York, by what one hears, easily worth a Hundred Thousand!”
Lord Theign looked from one of them to the other. “I sell the man a Hundred Thousand worth of swagger and advertisement; and of fraudulent swagger and objectionable advertisement at that?”
“Well”— Lord John was but briefly80 baffled —“when the picture’s his you can’t help its doing what it can and what it will for him anywhere!”
“Then it isn’t his yet,” the elder man retorted —“and I promise you never will be if he has sent you to me with his big drum!”
Lady Sandgate turned sadly on this to her associate in patience, as if the case were now really beyond them. “Yes, how indeed can it ever become his if Theign simply won’t let him pay for it?”
Her question was unanswerable. “It’s the first time in all my life I’ve known a man feel insulted, in such a piece of business, by happening not to be, in the usual way, more or less swindled!”
“Theign is unable to take it in,” her ladyship explained, “that — as I’ve heard it said of all these money-monsters of the new type — Bender simply can’t afford not to be cited and celebrated81 as the biggest buyer who ever lived.”
“Ah, cited and celebrated at my expense — say it at once and have it over, that I may enjoy what you all want to do to me!”
“The dear man’s inimitable — at his ‘expense’!” It was more than Lord John could bear as he fairly flung himself off in his derisive82 impotence and addressed his wail83 to Lady Sandgate.
“Yes, at my expense is exactly what I mean,” Lord Theign asseverated84 —“at the expense of my modest claim to regulate my behaviour by my own standards. There you perfectly are about the man, and it’s precisely85 what I say — that he’s to hustle86 and harry87 me because he’s a money-monster: which I never for a moment dreamed of, please understand, when I let you, John, thrust him at me as a pecuniary88 resource at Dedborough. I didn’t put my property on view that he might blow about it ———!”
“No, if you like it,” Lady Sandgate returned; “but you certainly didn’t so arrange”— she seemed to think her point somehow would help —“that you might blow about it yourself!”
“Nobody wants to ‘blow,’” Lord John more stoutly89 interposed, “either hot or cold, I take it; but I really don’t see the harm of Bender’s liking90 to be known for the scale of his transactions — actual or merely imputed91 even, if you will; since that scale is really so magnificent.”
Lady Sandgate half accepted, half qualified92 this plea. “The only question perhaps is why he doesn’t try for some precious work that somebody — less delicious than dear Theign — can be persuaded on bended knees to accept a hundred thousand for.”
“‘Try’ for one?”— her younger visitor took it up while her elder more attentively93 watched him. “That was exactly what he did try for when he pressed you so hard in vain for the great Sir Joshua.”
“Oh well, he mustn’t come back to that — must he, Theign?” her ladyship cooed.
That personage failed to reply, so that Lord John went on, unconscious apparently of the still more suspicious study to which he exposed himself. “Besides which there are no things of that magnitude knocking about, don’t you know? — they’ve got to be worked up first if they’re to reach the grand publicity94 of the Figure! Would you mind,” he continued to his noble monitor, “an agreement on some such basis as this? — that you shall resign yourself to the biggest equivalent you’ll squeamishly consent to take, if it’s at the same time the smallest he’ll squeamishly consent to offer; but that, that done, you shall leave him free ——”
Lady Sandgate took it up straight, rounding it off, as their companion only waited. “Leave him free to talk about the sum offered and the sum taken as practically one and the same?”
“Ah, you know,” Lord John discriminated95, “he doesn’t ‘talk’ so much himself — there’s really nothing blatant96 or crude about poor Bender. It’s the rate at which — by the very way he’s ‘fixed’: an awful way indeed, I grant you! — a perfect army of reporter-wretches, close at his heels, are always talking for him and of him.”
Lord Theign spoke hereupon at last with the air as of an impulse that had been slowly gathering97 force. “You talk for him, my dear chap, pretty well. You urge his case, my honour, quite as if you were assured of a commission on the job — on a fine ascending98 scale! Has he put you up to that proposition, eh? Do you get a handsome percentage and are you to make a good thing of it?”
The young man coloured under this stinging pleasantry — whether from a good conscience affronted99 or from a bad one made worse; but he otherwise showed a bold front, only bending his eyes a moment on his watch. “As he’s to come to you himself — and I don’t know why the mischief100 he doesn’t come! — he will answer you that graceful101 question.”
“Will he answer it,” Lord Theign asked, “with the veracity102 that the suggestion you’ve just made on his behalf represents him as so beautifully adhering to?” On which he again quite fiercely turned his back and recovered his detachment, the others giving way behind him to a blanker dismay.
Lord John, in spite of this however, pumped up a tone. “I don’t see why you should speak as if I were urging some abomination.”
“Then I’ll tell you why!”— and Lord Theign was upon him again for the purpose. “Because I had rather give the cursed thing away outright103 and for good and all than that it should hang out there another day in the interest of such equivocations!”
Lady Sandgate’s dismay yielded to her wonder, and her wonder apparently in turn to her amusement. “‘Give it away,’ my dear friend, to a man who only longs to smother104 you in gold?”
Her dear friend, however, had lost patience with her levity105. “Give it away — just for a luxury of protest and a stoppage of chatter — to some cause as unlike as possible that of Mr. Bender’s power of sound and his splendid reputation: to the Public, to the Authorities, to the Thingumbob, to the Nation!”
Lady Sandgate broke into horror while Lord John stood sombre and stupefied. “Ah, my dear creature, you’ve flights of extravagance ——!”
“One thing’s very certain,” Lord Theign quite heedlessly pursued —“that the thought of my property on view there does give intolerably on my nerves, more and more every minute that I’m conscious of it; so that, hang it, if one thinks of it, why shouldn’t I, for my relief, do again, damme, what I like? — that is bang the door in their faces, have the show immediately stopped?” He turned with the attraction of this idea from one of his listeners to the other. “It’s my show — it isn’t Bender’s, surely! — and I can do just as I choose with it.”
“Ah, but isn’t that the very point?”— and Lady Sandgate put it to Lord John. “Isn’t it Bender’s show much more than his?”
Her invoked106 authority, however, in answer to this, made but a motion of disappointment and disgust at so much rank folly107 — while Lord Theign, on the other hand, followed up his happy thought. “Then if it’s Bender’s show, or if he claims it is, there’s all the more reason!” And it took his lordship’s inspiration no longer to flower. “See here, John — do this: go right round there this moment, please, and tell them from me to shut straight down!”
“‘Shut straight down’?” the young man abhorrently echoed.
“Stop it to-night — wind it up and end it: see?” The more the entertainer of that vision held it there the more charm it clearly took on for him. “Have the picture removed from view and the incident closed.”
“You seriously ask that of me!” poor Lord John quavered.
“Why in the world shouldn’t I? It’s a jolly lot less than you asked of me a month ago at Dedborough.”
“What then am I to say to them?” Lord John spoke but after a long moment, during which he had only looked hard and — an observer might even then have felt — ominously108 at his taskmaster.
That personage replied as if wholly to have done with the matter. “Say anything that comes into your clever head. I don’t really see that there’s anything else for you!” Lady Sandgate sighed to the messenger, who gave no sign save of positive stiffness.
The latter seemed still to weigh his displeasing109 obligation; then he eyed his friend significantly — almost portentously110. “Those are absolutely your sentiments?”
“Those are absolutely my sentiments”— and Lord Theign brought this out as with the force of a physical push.
“Very well then!” But the young man, indulging in a final, a fairly sinister111, study of such a dealer112 in the arbitrary, made sure of the extent, whatever it was, of his own wrong. “Not one more day?”
Lord Theign only waved him away. “Not one more hour!”
He paused at the door, this reluctant spokesman, as if for some supreme113 protest; but after another prolonged and decisive engagement with the two pairs of eyes that waited, though differently, on his performance, he clapped on his hat as in the rage of his resentment114 and departed on his mission.
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1
waiving
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| v.宣布放弃( waive的现在分词 )；搁置；推迟；放弃（权利、要求等） | |
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disclaimed
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| v.否认( disclaim的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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cyclone
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| n.旋风，龙卷风 | |
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remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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trumpery
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| n.无价值的杂物；adj.（物品）中看不中用的 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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bracelet
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| n.手镯，臂镯 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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garb
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| n.服装，装束 | |
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consummate
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| adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle | |
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yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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compassionate
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| adj.有同情心的，表示同情的 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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overflowed
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| 溢出的 | |
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penetration
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| n.穿透，穿人，渗透 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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aggression
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| n.进攻，侵略，侵犯，侵害 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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vouchsafed
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| v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 )；允诺 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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egregious
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| adj.非常的，过分的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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33
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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34
insignificance
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| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
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35
mendacious
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| adj.不真的，撒谎的 | |
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36
bamboozled
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| v.欺骗，使迷惑( bamboozle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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38
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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39
vehemently
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| adv. 热烈地 | |
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40
apprehensively
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| adv.担心地 | |
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41
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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42
asperity
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| n.粗鲁，艰苦 | |
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43
expenditure
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| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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44
allude
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| v.提及，暗指 | |
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45
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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46
shrieking
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| v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 ) | |
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47
agility
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| n.敏捷，活泼 | |
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48
gaped
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| v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的过去式和过去分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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49
fixedly
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| adv.固定地；不屈地，坚定不移地 | |
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50
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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51
proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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52
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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53
imputation
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| n.归罪，责难 | |
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54
ductility
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| n.展延性，柔软性，顺从；韧性；塑性；展性 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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56
adviser
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| n.劝告者，顾问 | |
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57
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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58
luscious
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| adj.美味的；芬芳的；肉感的，引与性欲的 | |
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morbidly
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| adv.病态地 | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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62
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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63
pedants
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| n.卖弄学问的人，学究，书呆子( pedant的名词复数 ) | |
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petulance
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| n.发脾气，生气，易怒，暴躁，性急 | |
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uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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perversity
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| n.任性；刚愎自用 | |
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67
shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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68
tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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pedantry
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| n.迂腐，卖弄学问 | |
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71
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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72
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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73
loathe
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| v.厌恶，嫌恶 | |
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74
corrupter
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| 堕落的，道德败坏的； 贪污的，腐败的； 腐烂的； （文献等）错误百出的 | |
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wilful
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| adj.任性的，故意的 | |
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76
flaunting
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| adj.招摇的，扬扬得意的，夸耀的v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的现在分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来 | |
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patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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81
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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82
derisive
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| adj.嘲弄的 | |
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83
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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84
asseverated
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| v.郑重声明，断言( asseverate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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85
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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86
hustle
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| v.推搡；竭力兜售或获取；催促；n.奔忙(碌) | |
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87
harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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88
pecuniary
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| adj.金钱的；金钱上的 | |
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89
stoutly
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| adv.牢固地，粗壮的 | |
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90
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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91
imputed
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| v.把（错误等）归咎于( impute的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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92
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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93
attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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94
publicity
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| n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告 | |
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95
discriminated
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| 分别，辨别，区分( discriminate的过去式和过去分词 )； 歧视，有差别地对待 | |
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96
blatant
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| adj.厚颜无耻的；显眼的；炫耀的 | |
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97
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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98
ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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99
affronted
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| adj.被侮辱的，被冒犯的v.勇敢地面对( affront的过去式和过去分词 )；相遇 | |
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100
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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101
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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102
veracity
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| n.诚实 | |
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103
outright
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| adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的 | |
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104
smother
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| vt./vi.使窒息；抑制；闷死；n.浓烟；窒息 | |
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105
levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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106
invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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107
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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108
ominously
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| adv.恶兆地，不吉利地；预示地 | |
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109
displeasing
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| 不愉快的，令人发火的 | |
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110
portentously
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111
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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112
dealer
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| n.商人，贩子 | |
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113
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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114
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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