His visit to London was the pursuit of a definite plan. He was animated1 by the hope that he knew where Sisily was likely to have sought shelter. Ever since her disappearance2 this idea had lurked3 in his imagination and occupied his secret thoughts.
It was the fruit of one of their last talks together—a memory they shared in common. How well he remembered the occasion! They had been on the cliffs looking down at the Gurnard’s Head wallowing like a monster with a broken back in the foam4 of a raging sea. It was the day after the death of Sisily’s mother, and Sisily had clung to him as if he were the only friend she had in the world. She had spoken to him from the depth of an overburdened soul impelled5 to confide6 in another, telling him of her mother’s sad life, unintentionally revealing something of the unhappiness of her own. And she told him a strange thing about her mother’s last hours.
On her death-bed the unhappy woman must have had her fears concerning the future of her daughter—belated uneasy premonitions arising after her dying confession7 to the man supposed to be her husband, perhaps causing her to doubt the wisdom of that revelation. That seemed plain enough to Charles afterwards, though not apparent at the time Sisily had confided8 in him, for she had died without giving the girl the slightest indication of her life’s secret, as if in some inscrutable hope that the tangle9 might be made straight.
What she did do was to make a feeble effort to save her daughter from the consequences of her own unhappy act, or at least to help her if those results arose. She had whispered a name, the name of an old friend of her girlhood who would befriend her child if ever she needed help. At her urgent request Sisily had propped10 her up in bed while she wrote down the address. Having performed this feat11 with infinite labour, she dropped back on her pillow, clinging fast to the hand of the child she loved and whose future she had blasted at the command of conscience.
Charles recalled how Sisily had taken that pathetic little scrap12 of paper from her blouse, kissed it with quivering lips, and handed it to him in silence. He had deciphered the pencilled scrawl13 with difficulty. The name was Catherine Pursill, Charleswood, Surrey. It remained in his mind for a special reason. Sisily was afraid she might lose the paper (perhaps, like her mother, she had some prescience of the future) and he had endeavoured to divert her thoughts by making “memory pictures” of the name and address after the method of a thought reader. He had told her to picture a cat sitting on a window ledge14, and that would fix the name in her mind. “Purr”—“Sill”—there it was! As for the place, it was only necessary to imagine him wandering in a wood (he slyly suggested it)—Charleswood, and there they were again!
Sisily had smiled wanly16 at these “memory pictures” and said she would always be able to remember the address of her mother’s old friend by their means.
They were effectual enough in his own case. The grotesque17 association of ideas brought the address to his mind when he first thought of seeking Sisily in London. He decided18 to go to Charleswood as soon as he reached there. The dying woman seemed quite certain her old friend was still in Charleswood, although it was twenty years since she had heard from her. She had told Sisily that Mrs. Pursill’s house was her own, and it had belonged to her parents before her. She had assumed that she was not likely to move. The possibility that Death might have moved her without consulting her convenience did not seem to have occurred to her.
It did to Charles Turold though, on his journey up from Cornwall. But he thrust the chilling thought resolutely19 from him, clinging to his slight clue because he had nothing else to sustain him, building such hopes upon it that by the time he reached London scarcely a doubt remained. He spent the last hour of his journey picturing his meeting with the runaway20 girl, holding her, kissing her, sheltering her in his arms from the world. And afterwards? He refused to contemplate21 what was to happen afterwards, and how he was to shield her from the unsentimental clutch of the law which was also seeking her. He declined also to allow his thoughts to dwell upon his own position, which was invidious and threatening enough in all conscience for a man setting out to be the buckler and shield of a girl in Sisily’s plight22. He put these obtrusive23 contingencies24 out of his mind. Time enough for those bitter reflections afterwards. The great thing was to find Sisily first, before shaping further action. So he reasoned, with the single purpose of a man mastered by love, and the desperate instinct of a reckless temperament25 which gambled with life, never looking beyond the next throw.
He retained sufficient caution to refrain from going to his father’s house in Richmond when he reached London. His father’s parting words lingered unpleasantly in his mind to serve as a warning against the folly26 of that course. The same unusual prudence27 compelled him to leap out of a taxi-cab as soon as he had leapt into it. For himself he did not care, but he had to be careful for Sisily’s sake. So he clambered on top of a ‘bus with his suit case. The same sobering feeling of responsibility directed his choice of an hotel when he descended28 from the vehicle into the seething29 streets. He chose a quiet small place off Charing30 Cross, and booked a room. After a bath and some lunch he went out to a neighbouring bookstall and bought a railway time-table. The next train to Charleswood left Charing Cross in less than half an hour. He walked across to the station, purchased a ticket, and took his seat. In a few minutes the train started.
Now that he was actually on the way of putting his idea to the test his former doubts assailed31 him again with renewed force, but he refused to listen to them. He told himself that a dying woman’s idea was not likely to be wrong, and that he would find Sisily at Charleswood. She was sure to be there, because she had nowhere else to go. So he reasoned, or sought to reason, until the train slowed down at the station which held the solution of his hopes and fears.
It was a small wayside station at which he alighted—a mere32 hamlet set in the slumberous33 calm of English rural scenery, passed by express trains with a roar of derision by day and contemptuously winking34 tail-lights at night. On the dark green background of the distant heights an eruption35 of new red bungalows36 threatened to spread and destroy the beauty of Charleswood at no remote date. But at present the sylvan37 charm of the spot was unspoiled. Its meadows and fields seemed to lie happily unconscious of the contagion38 flaming on the billowy hills.
The porter who emerged from a kind of wooden kennel39 and clattered40 up to Charles to collect his ticket, stared hard when the young man asked if Mrs. Pursill lived at Charleswood. He appeared to give the matter deep thought before nodding affirmatively, and accompanied him to the station entrance to point out an old house lying behind a strip of white fence and a clump41 of dark-green trees half-way up a distant hill (not where the bungalows were cropping up, but in the opposite direction), with the intimation that it was the residence of the lady he was looking for. He then watched Charles down the rambling42 village street until he was out of sight.
It was a long walk—more than a mile—before Charles reached the white fence and the group of trees which shielded the house behind dark-green foliage43. He caught a glimpse of partly shuttered windows peeping through this leafy screen, but it was not until he had passed through the trees that he had a clear view of the house.
The place was dreary44 and dilapidated, with a partly shuttered front. The green-stained walls and a mask of ivy45 gave the place a resemblance to a large ivy-grown tomb. Charles’s spirits were depressed46 as he looked at it. There was something so wan15 and melancholy47 in its appearance that his high anticipations48 rapidly faded. In the face of that reality he could no longer picture a silver-haired gracious old lady welcoming Sisily with tears in her eyes for the sake of her dead mother. The human qualities of warmth and tenderness did not accord with that chilling neglected exterior49.
He approached the door, his sensations painful enough in the mingled50 tumult51 of suspense52, hope, and fear. There was no bell, only an old-fashioned brass53 knocker, which, with a kind of surly stiffness, resisted his attempt to use it. He managed to wrench54 one knock out of it, and left it suspended in the air.
There was a considerable pause before the knock was answered. Then the door was opened by a pretty slim servant girl. There was nothing funereal55 in her appearance except her black dress, and that was set off by a coquettish white apron56. She looked at the young man with questioning bright eyes, as though surprised at his appearance there.
“Does Mrs. Pursill live here?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” she replied with a trace of hesitation57.
The barometer58 of hope went up several degrees in Charles’s breast. “Could I see her?” he eagerly said.
“I’ll ask, sir. What name, please?”
“No name. Mrs. Pursill would not know it. But my business is very important.”
The maid looked at him doubtfully, and left him standing59 there while she disappeared within. From the depth of the house an agitated60 feminine murmur61 reached him through the half-open door. “What’s he like, Ruby62?” “Quite the gentleman, miss—young and very good-looking.” A pause, and the first voice rejoined: “Show him into the drawing-room, and ask him to sit down.”
The maid came back with this message, and took Charles into a large sombre room. She gave him a fluttered glance of coquetry as she offered him a chair, as though she would have liked to linger with such an unusual visitor, then went out softly, closing the door behind her.
The room into which he had been ushered63 was furnished after some faded standard of departed elegance64 with tapestried65 chairs, and couches, painted screens, landscapes worked in black lutestring on white silk, and collections of stuffed humming-birds which gazed wanly at the intruder from glassy eyes. A massive dead Christ in Gobelin tapestry66 covered the whole side of one wall, and from the opposite one the threaded features of Joseph and his brethren stared gloomily down. These subjects accorded ill with several pieces of marble statuary scattered67 about the room—a reeling Bacchus, a nude68 Psyche69, and an unchaste presentment of Leda drooping71 her head over an amorous72 swan. A broken statue of a pastoral shepherd had been laid on a table in the corner and partly covered with a cloth, where it looked very much like a corpse73 awaiting its turn in a dissecting-room.
Charles had a dreary wait in these surroundings. At first he sat still, but as the time passed he endeavoured to distract his anxious thoughts by walking round the room looking at the extraordinary collections of objects it contained. He was earnestly scrutinizing74 a lutestring picture depicting75 “The Origin of the Dimple”—a cupid poking76 his forefinger77 into the double chin of a fat languishing78 female—when the door opened and a woman entered.
She was tall and thin, and had reached that period of life when it costs a woman an effort to look in a mirror because of the menace of approaching age which stares back from the depth of frightened eyes. Her dress, however, suggested that she could not bring herself to believe she was yet out of the hunt, but was still trying to follow it breathlessly on the back of that broken-kneed and sorry steed, late middle-age. There was something ridiculous in the girlish attire79 intended to convince her fellow creatures that her day was not over; something terrible in the low blouse, short skirt, silk stockings, gauze, lace and fluttering ribbons with which she sought to delude80 the sneering81 figure of waiting Time.
Charles’s first startled thought was that he had unwittingly entered one of those neglected shuttered houses of romance, where an eccentric female recluse82 sits with a waiting wedding breakfast in readiness for a bridegroom who has disappeared thirty years before. But the face of the woman advancing towards him suggested that she was not particular about the identity of the form emerging from the mists of time to rescue her from virginity. She looked as if she would have gladly surrendered that jewel to any freebooter in return for a passage in the ship of matrimony, and gone off flying the proud signal, “All’s well.”
She approached with a smile, and heaven knows what agitation83 in her breast at the sight of a handsome well-dressed young man in her lonely nest. “You wished to see me?” she asked.
“Mrs. Pursill?” he said interrogatively.
She made a negative sign. “I am Miss Pursill. My mother is an invalid84.”
“I am most anxious to see her.”
“My mother keeps to her bedroom.”
“I have come down from London purposely to see her,” he said anxiously. “My business is very important.”
“Could you not tell me?” she murmured.
“I am afraid not.”
She fidgeted and came a little closer, as though she liked the nearness of his handsome presence.
“Very well, you shall see her, but you won’t be able to talk to her. Come with me.”
They went from the room and upstairs. Miss Pursill opened a door on the first floor and beckoned85 Charles to enter. It was a bedroom, furnished on the same scale of antique magnificence as the drawing-room downstairs. In a deep armchair in front of a fire sat an old woman, tucked up in an eiderdown of blue and white satin. She did not look round as they entered, but remained quite still—an immobile figure with a nodding head.
“That is Mrs. Pursill,” said her daughter.
Charles glanced at the old woman in the chair and turned away. She was past anything except waiting for death, and it was impossible to speak to her or question her. She was in the last stage of senile decay. He masked his disappointment with an effort, conscious that the eyes of the younger woman were fixed86 on his face.
“If there is anything I can tell you—” she simpered, as she met his glance.
His face betrayed his anxiety.
“I had some reason to think that a young lady of my acquaintance, the daughter of an old friend of your mother’s, might be staying with her.”
“There is no young lady here,” said Miss Pursill with a hard look. “I know nothing about it. What is her name?”
“I have made a mistake, I am afraid.” Charles was instantly on his guard. “I am really very sorry—”
She was not altogether proof against the winning smile with which he tendered an apology, but she looked at him strangely as she accompanied him downstairs to the front door.
Charles went back to London with a dark and angry face. His anger was directed against Fate, which had arranged such a fantastic anticlimax87 for his cherished hopes. The blow was almost too much for him. He had deceived himself into thinking that he would find Sisily at Charleswood, and he felt that he had really lost her. He was now reduced to searching for her in the great wilderness88 of London, which seemed a hopeless task.
By the time the train reached Charing Cross he rallied from his fit of despondency. He refused to despair. Sisily was somewhere in London, at that moment walking alone among its countless89 hordes90, perhaps thinking of him. He would find her—he must! Where to commence? She had reached Paddington only a few nights ago, so that was obviously the logical starting-point of any inquiries91. To Paddington he went, this time in a taxi-cab.
He had an extraordinary initial piece of luck. Fortune, either regretting her previous treatment or tantalizing92 him in feminine fashion with the expectation of greater favours to come, threw him at the very outset of his inquiries against the red-headed luggage porter who had spoken with Sisily on her arrival from Penzance. The porter, leaning against the white enamelled walls of a Tube passage, pictured the scene with much loquacity93, and a faithful recollection of his own share in the interview. Charles anxiously asked him if the young lady he had encountered was very pretty—pale and dark. The porter, with a judicial94 air, responded that looks in women was, after all, a matter of taste—what was one man’s meat was another man’s poison, as you might say—but this young lady had dark hair and eyes, and her face hadn’t too much colour in it, so far as he remembered. He apologized for this vagueness of description on the plea that one girl was very like another to a man who saw them in droves every day, as he did. But one or two minute particulars of her dress which he was able to supply convinced Charles that he had seen Sisily. The man added that as far as he knew the young lady went on to Euston Square, though he couldn’t say he’d actually seen her catch the train for there.
It was not until he had pocketed the half-crown Charles gave him that he added a piece of information of some importance.
“You’re not the first who’s been inquiring about this particular young lady,” he said. “There was somebody before you—let me see—Thursday it was. He came strolling along, affable as you please, and seemed to know all about it before he started. ‘That young lady who arrived by the Cornwall train on Tuesday night, porter, and asked you the way to Euston Square—what was she like?’ That took me back a bit, but I told him, just as I’ve told you. He asked me another question or two, and then went into the station-master’s office.”
“What was he like?”
“Not much older than yourself, in a brown suit, tall and thin, with sharpish features and quick smiling eyes.”
Barrant! Charles recognized the description with a sinking heart. He turned away with a sickening sense of the impotence of his own efforts. Scotland Yard was searching for Sisily, and no doubt had warned all the London police to look out for her. She might be arrested any minute. Outside the station he bought an evening paper from a yelling newsboy, and hastily scanned the headlines under the flare95 of a street lamp. There was nothing about the Cornwall murder. So far they were safe. His own departure from Cornwall had apparently96 caused no suspicion, and Sisily was still free—somewhere in London.
Where? To find her—that was his task. He rallied sharply from his despondency. He would pit himself against the police. A desperate man, guided by love, could do much—might even outwit the tremendous forces of Scotland Yard. He would not be worthy97 of Sisily if he lost heart because the odds98 were against him. Fortune’s wheel might have a lucky turn in store for him.
He beckoned a passing taxi-cab. “Euston Square,” he said as he entered. That was obviously the next point of his search.
But Fortune vouchsafed99 him no more favours that day. His dive into the crowded depths of Euston Square brought forth100 no result—no clue which would help in his search. He interviewed many keepers of the “temperance hotels” and boarding-houses which abounded101 in that quarter, all sorts of women, but all alike in their quick suspicious resentment70 of his guarded inquiries and in their pretended ignorance of past visitors to their dingy102 portals. He had little experience of the embittered103 sordid104 outlook of a class which earned its own bread by supplying indifferent food and shelter to London’s floating population, but after his fiftieth repulse105 he had no difficulty in reaching the conclusion that the police were again ahead of him with their inquiries.
Nevertheless he persevered106 fruitlessly until a late hour before returning to his hotel to pass a sleepless107 night in a fever of baffled excitement. Not till then did he realize how much he had been upheld by the hope of finding Sisily at Charleswood. He was lost in a maze108 of conjectures109, fears, and impossible plans, though his intelligence told him that no plan of search he could form was likely to be of the slightest use. Only luck could help him there, and it was part of the hopelessness of the situation that he dared not invoke110 the aid of any of those agencies or organizations which make it their business to find persons who have disappeared in London. His search must be a solitary111 one.
The morning saw him enter upon it with a feverish112 energy borrowed from the future and the desperate optimism of a temperament willing to gamble with Fortune against such incalculable odds. At first he attempted to divine the motives113 likely to actuate a girl ignorant of London in seeking a hiding-place there, and shaped his search accordingly; but he gave that up after a while, and decided to search the streets of the inner suburbs, in the hope of encountering her sooner or later. His method was to purchase a map of each district, and explore it thoroughly114 from one end to the other. He got his meals anywhere, and slept in the nearest hotel where he happened to find himself late at night. But his meals were often missed and his broken sleep haunted with nightmare visions of the pitfalls115 and snares116 spread for inexperienced girls in London.
So Charles passed nearly a week of interminable tramping of London streets, scanning the endless medley117 of faces in the hope of a chance glimpse of Sisily’s wistful eyes and pale features. But it is one thing to gamble with Fortune, and another to win from her. Sometimes she flattered Charles with a chance resemblance which sent him flying across the traffic at the risk of his life, and once he sprang off a ‘bus after a girl he saw vanishing into an Underground lift, but it was not Sisily. The end of the week saw him returning from uncharted areas of outer London to the more familiar thoroughfares of the city’s life, for in that time his dauntless spirit had realized the colossal118 folly of any attempt to search London by system. He had no intention of abandoning his quest, but he now felt that it did not matter where his footsteps led him, because it was only by a piece of wonderful luck that he could ever hope to meet Sisily. He did not even know if she was in London. But he believed she was, and some indomitable inward whisper kept assuring him that he would find her sooner or later. So he kept on—and on, seeking the vision of his desires with the insatiable eagerness of a man pursuing the unreachable horizon of a hashish dream.
It was towards the end of this time that it occurred to Charles to wonder if Sisily had made her way to Charleswood since his first visit there. He was resting in a Lambeth public-house after an exhausting day’s wanderings over South London when this thought came to him. He sat up, slapping his thigh119 with excitement, asking himself why he had not thought of that before. It was a chance—certainly a chance. He decided to run down to Charleswood again on the following afternoon.
He did, and found himself disappointed once more. The elegant Miss Pursill had gone to Brighton for change of air, but the pretty maid, who had been left behind to look after the house and the decayed old lady, assured him that there had been nobody to see Mrs. Pursill since his last visit. Miss Pursill went away the very next day after he was down, and there had been no callers or visitors.
She imparted this information at first with a sparkle of coquetry in her eye, then with a glance of compassion120 as she noticed how much the debonair121 visitor had changed for the worse since she saw him last. She looked at him solicitously122, as though she would have liked to remove with womanly hands the marks of neglect from his apparel. From the door she watched him making his way back to the station. She stood there in the shade of the evening, following him with her eyes until the bend of the road hid him from view.
点击收听单词发音
1 animated | |
adj.生气勃勃的,活跃的,愉快的 | |
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2 disappearance | |
n.消失,消散,失踪 | |
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3 lurked | |
vi.潜伏,埋伏(lurk的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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4 foam | |
v./n.泡沫,起泡沫 | |
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5 impelled | |
v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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6 confide | |
v.向某人吐露秘密 | |
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7 confession | |
n.自白,供认,承认 | |
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8 confided | |
v.吐露(秘密,心事等)( confide的过去式和过去分词 );(向某人)吐露(隐私、秘密等) | |
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9 tangle | |
n.纠缠;缠结;混乱;v.(使)缠绕;变乱 | |
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10 propped | |
支撑,支持,维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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11 feat | |
n.功绩;武艺,技艺;adj.灵巧的,漂亮的,合适的 | |
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12 scrap | |
n.碎片;废料;v.废弃,报废 | |
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13 scrawl | |
vt.潦草地书写;n.潦草的笔记,涂写 | |
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14 ledge | |
n.壁架,架状突出物;岩架,岩礁 | |
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15 wan | |
(wide area network)广域网 | |
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16 wanly | |
adv.虚弱地;苍白地,无血色地 | |
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17 grotesque | |
adj.怪诞的,丑陋的;n.怪诞的图案,怪人(物) | |
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18 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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19 resolutely | |
adj.坚决地,果断地 | |
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20 runaway | |
n.逃走的人,逃亡,亡命者;adj.逃亡的,逃走的 | |
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21 contemplate | |
vt.盘算,计议;周密考虑;注视,凝视 | |
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22 plight | |
n.困境,境况,誓约,艰难;vt.宣誓,保证,约定 | |
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23 obtrusive | |
adj.显眼的;冒失的 | |
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24 contingencies | |
n.偶然发生的事故,意外事故( contingency的名词复数 );以备万一 | |
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25 temperament | |
n.气质,性格,性情 | |
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26 folly | |
n.愚笨,愚蠢,蠢事,蠢行,傻话 | |
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27 prudence | |
n.谨慎,精明,节俭 | |
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28 descended | |
a.为...后裔的,出身于...的 | |
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29 seething | |
沸腾的,火热的 | |
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30 charing | |
n.炭化v.把…烧成炭,把…烧焦( char的现在分词 );烧成炭,烧焦;做杂役女佣 | |
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31 assailed | |
v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 );困扰;质问;毅然应对 | |
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32 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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33 slumberous | |
a.昏昏欲睡的 | |
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34 winking | |
n.瞬眼,目语v.使眼色( wink的现在分词 );递眼色(表示友好或高兴等);(指光)闪烁;闪亮 | |
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35 eruption | |
n.火山爆发;(战争等)爆发;(疾病等)发作 | |
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36 bungalows | |
n.平房( bungalow的名词复数 );单层小屋,多于一层的小屋 | |
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37 sylvan | |
adj.森林的 | |
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38 contagion | |
n.(通过接触的疾病)传染;蔓延 | |
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39 kennel | |
n.狗舍,狗窝 | |
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40 clattered | |
发出咔哒声(clatter的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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41 clump | |
n.树丛,草丛;vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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42 rambling | |
adj.[建]凌乱的,杂乱的 | |
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43 foliage | |
n.叶子,树叶,簇叶 | |
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44 dreary | |
adj.令人沮丧的,沉闷的,单调乏味的 | |
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45 ivy | |
n.常青藤,常春藤 | |
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46 depressed | |
adj.沮丧的,抑郁的,不景气的,萧条的 | |
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47 melancholy | |
n.忧郁,愁思;adj.令人感伤(沮丧)的,忧郁的 | |
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48 anticipations | |
预期( anticipation的名词复数 ); 预测; (信托财产收益的)预支; 预期的事物 | |
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49 exterior | |
adj.外部的,外在的;表面的 | |
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50 mingled | |
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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51 tumult | |
n.喧哗;激动,混乱;吵闹 | |
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52 suspense | |
n.(对可能发生的事)紧张感,担心,挂虑 | |
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53 brass | |
n.黄铜;黄铜器,铜管乐器 | |
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54 wrench | |
v.猛拧;挣脱;使扭伤;n.扳手;痛苦,难受 | |
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55 funereal | |
adj.悲哀的;送葬的 | |
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56 apron | |
n.围裙;工作裙 | |
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57 hesitation | |
n.犹豫,踌躇 | |
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58 barometer | |
n.气压表,睛雨表,反应指标 | |
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59 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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60 agitated | |
adj.被鼓动的,不安的 | |
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61 murmur | |
n.低语,低声的怨言;v.低语,低声而言 | |
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62 ruby | |
n.红宝石,红宝石色 | |
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63 ushered | |
v.引,领,陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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64 elegance | |
n.优雅;优美,雅致;精致,巧妙 | |
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65 tapestried | |
adj.饰挂绣帷的,织在绣帷上的v.用挂毯(或绣帷)装饰( tapestry的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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66 tapestry | |
n.挂毯,丰富多采的画面 | |
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67 scattered | |
adj.分散的,稀疏的;散步的;疏疏落落的 | |
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68 nude | |
adj.裸体的;n.裸体者,裸体艺术品 | |
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69 psyche | |
n.精神;灵魂 | |
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70 resentment | |
n.怨愤,忿恨 | |
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71 drooping | |
adj. 下垂的,无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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72 amorous | |
adj.多情的;有关爱情的 | |
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73 corpse | |
n.尸体,死尸 | |
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74 scrutinizing | |
v.仔细检查,详审( scrutinize的现在分词 ) | |
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75 depicting | |
描绘,描画( depict的现在分词 ); 描述 | |
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76 poking | |
n. 刺,戳,袋 vt. 拨开,刺,戳 vi. 戳,刺,捅,搜索,伸出,行动散慢 | |
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77 forefinger | |
n.食指 | |
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78 languishing | |
a. 衰弱下去的 | |
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79 attire | |
v.穿衣,装扮[同]array;n.衣着;盛装 | |
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80 delude | |
vt.欺骗;哄骗 | |
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81 sneering | |
嘲笑的,轻蔑的 | |
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82 recluse | |
n.隐居者 | |
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83 agitation | |
n.搅动;搅拌;鼓动,煽动 | |
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84 invalid | |
n.病人,伤残人;adj.有病的,伤残的;无效的 | |
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85 beckoned | |
v.(用头或手的动作)示意,召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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86 fixed | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
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87 anticlimax | |
n.令人扫兴的结局;突降法 | |
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88 wilderness | |
n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等,荒漠 | |
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89 countless | |
adj.无数的,多得不计其数的 | |
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90 hordes | |
n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 );部落 | |
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91 inquiries | |
n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 );疑问;探究;打听 | |
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92 tantalizing | |
adj.逗人的;惹弄人的;撩人的;煽情的v.逗弄,引诱,折磨( tantalize的现在分词 ) | |
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93 loquacity | |
n.多话,饶舌 | |
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94 judicial | |
adj.司法的,法庭的,审判的,明断的,公正的 | |
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95 flare | |
v.闪耀,闪烁;n.潮红;突发 | |
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96 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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97 worthy | |
adj.(of)值得的,配得上的;有价值的 | |
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98 odds | |
n.让步,机率,可能性,比率;胜败优劣之别 | |
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99 vouchsafed | |
v.给予,赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 );允诺 | |
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100 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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101 abounded | |
v.大量存在,充满,富于( abound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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102 dingy | |
adj.昏暗的,肮脏的 | |
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103 embittered | |
v.使怨恨,激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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104 sordid | |
adj.肮脏的,不干净的,卑鄙的,暗淡的 | |
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105 repulse | |
n.击退,拒绝;vt.逐退,击退,拒绝 | |
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106 persevered | |
v.坚忍,坚持( persevere的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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107 sleepless | |
adj.不睡眠的,睡不著的,不休息的 | |
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108 maze | |
n.迷宫,八阵图,混乱,迷惑 | |
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109 conjectures | |
推测,猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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110 invoke | |
v.求助于(神、法律);恳求,乞求 | |
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111 solitary | |
adj.孤独的,独立的,荒凉的;n.隐士 | |
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112 feverish | |
adj.发烧的,狂热的,兴奋的 | |
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113 motives | |
n.动机,目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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114 thoroughly | |
adv.完全地,彻底地,十足地 | |
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115 pitfalls | |
(捕猎野兽用的)陷阱( pitfall的名词复数 ); 意想不到的困难,易犯的错误 | |
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116 snares | |
n.陷阱( snare的名词复数 );圈套;诱人遭受失败(丢脸、损失等)的东西;诱惑物v.用罗网捕捉,诱陷,陷害( snare的第三人称单数 ) | |
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117 medley | |
n.混合 | |
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118 colossal | |
adj.异常的,庞大的 | |
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119 thigh | |
n.大腿;股骨 | |
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120 compassion | |
n.同情,怜悯 | |
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121 debonair | |
adj.殷勤的,快乐的 | |
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122 solicitously | |
adv.热心地,热切地 | |
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