"Miladi West!" exclaimed the maid. (She pronounced it "Vest") "Pardon, Madame, I did not know that any one was here."
She spoke3 in French, with an accent which told that her first language had been Italian, learned in the south of France; though in looks she was the chic4 Parisienne. Her English was quite good, but when she used that tongue, her accent was of New York. She preferred French, however, was proud of being French, and had Frenchified her Nicois-Italian name of Simonetta Amaranti to Simone Amaranthe. All Juliet Phayre's friends had to be polite to Simone.
"Mr. Phayre's man let me in," said the red-haired lady in widow's weeds. "After I'd had a look at the wedding presents, I was so dazzled that I switched off the lights." She laughed, and then cried, "Leave the lights now! I suppose Mademoiselle won't be forever?"
Simone shrugged5 her thin shoulders just perceptibly. "Mademoiselle sent me out on an errand, Miladi. I have not long returned, with the perfume she wanted. It was for the coiffeur who is here to wash the hair of Mademoiselle. She would not have the stuff he brought, so the man was obliged to wait. I am afraid the drying, even with the hot-air machine, will take some time. Miladi knows what a quantity of the hairs there are on the pretty head of Mademoiselle, and how she is exacting6 of the way everything is done!"
The red-haired lady guessed from the Frenchwoman's tone that Simone considered the introduction of a coiffeur a slight to her own skill. "Why, yes," she agreed. "Mademoiselle is exacting. But what would you? She is a spoiled child. The least crumple7 in a rose-leaf—by the way, Simone" (she stopped for a little throaty chuckle), "is it true about the carpet in this suite?"
"The carpet, Miladi?" Simone flushed faintly through her dark skin, and "Miladi" made a second guess. Of course Juliet trusted Simone, and depended upon her blindly; but she—Emmy West—had often wondered how certain spicy8 little items concerning the Phayre family reached the gossip columns of "society papers."
"I read such an amusing paragraph in Modern Ways this morning," she explained. "It was apropos9 of the wedding, of course. Modern Ways loves a chance for a 'dig' at us Americans who marry well-known Englishmen! It said that when Miss Juliet Phayre and her Uncle Henry came over from Paris the other day, and took this royal suite which Mr. Phayre had engaged, Miss Phayre sent for the manager before she'd been in the hotel half an hour. 'There's a spot of ink on the carpet,' she complained (according to the paper). 'I must have another carpet at once.' Now do tell me, Simone (I'm very discreet10!) did that really happen?"
"It did, Madame," the maid admitted. "Though how it got to these sacred journalists——"
"And did the manager say to Mademoiselle, 'We have had half the kings of Europe in this suite since that spot appeared, Miss Phayre, and not one of them mentioned it!'"
"His words were to that effect, Miladi, so far as I remember. But——"
"Oh, then you were in the room? What fun! You can tell me if Juliet—if Mademoiselle replied that a spotted11 carpet might be good enough for a king; it wasn't good enough for a Phayre."
Simone flung out her hands, palm upward. They were beautifully manicured hands, as carefully tended as her mistress's. And as she smiled her teeth showed very white. When her face was grave, she looked somewhat sullen13, and might be thirty-five; but the smile was rejuvenating14. It put her back to twenty-eight, and made her almost handsome as well as chic. "Miladi has known Mademoiselle since her schooldays, is it not?" she hedged. "Miladi will be able to judge as well as if I told her whether Mademoiselle would have made that answer."
"I thought it rang true when I read it!" laughed Lady West. "But Simone, when you say I have 'known Mademoiselle since her schooldays', you make me sound awfully15 antique. We were at Madame de Sain's together. I came over to England the year I left, and married poor Sir Algy only three months after I was presented." She thought it best to hammer these details into Simone's head, in case the woman really was in touch with those back-door, kitchen-stairs reporters. Then, to give an air of carelessness to her words, she turned the subject. "Perhaps you might let Mademoiselle know I've come. Parker told me that she was lying down—that she'd promised her uncle to rest till tea time. So I wouldn't have her disturbed. But if her hair is being washed, she might let me in."
"I will ask Miladi," said Simone. "I came to the salon to see if the curtains were drawn16. If Madame permits!" She tripped with her short, high-heeled step first to one window, then the other, and closed the draperies of old-rose brocade. Having done this, she pattered out of the room.
Emmy West's eyes followed the thin but graceful17 figure in black silk. "Simone is a character!" she thought. And she wondered what the maid's secret opinion was of this marriage which would take place next day; the richest American heiress with the poorest British duke!
Left alone again, Emmy wriggled18 up from her nest of cushions, and beguiled19 the time in examining the wedding gifts once more. This did not take long, as the marriage had been suddenly hurried on by special license20, and friends of Juliet Phayre and the Duke of Claremanagh had had only a few days to send in their offerings. Emmy had made this uninvited visit with the object of admiring a certain one of Juliet's presents, but she had already informed herself that it was not on show with the rest. Unless the bride-elect refused to see her, she did not intend to leave Harridge's without a glimpse—or anyhow, news—of it.
When she had wandered languidly round the three or four tables on which jewel cases, gold, silver, china, and tortoise-shell things were spread, she propped21 her own black-edged card conspicuously22 in front of a Sevres-framed mirror, and bent23 down for a hasty peep at her face in its oval. She wondered if her hair were a tiny touch too red. She liked it, herself, and thought the heart-shaped white face, with its wide-apart black eyes set in that copper24 halo, a siren face. In the weeds of a war-widow it seemed to her that she was almost irresistible25, but she could not help realizing that there were people who did resist her. The Duke was one. And an attractive cousin of Juliet's, John Manners, was another. She was vaguely26 aware that her own taste was decidedly vivid. Perhaps the hair was rather red! She had had it "bobbed" since Juliet came to London, because it worried her that Juliet should look years younger than she. No one would take Lady West for twenty-seven, but she had been an "old girl" and Juliet a "new girl," the year they met at school. Juliet was twenty-three now, and she, Emmy, had gone back to twenty-five. One had to be that, if one had married before the war!
Quickly she dusted on a little powder from her vanity box, and accentuated28 the cupid's bow of her lips with a stick of red salve, for it was possible that Claremanagh might "breeze in." It would be like him! This thought was still in her mind when a door behind her opened. She turned nervously29, tucking the lip-salve into her gold mesh30 bag, for just now the Duke was having a craze for baby complexions31 without make-up. But it was not the Duke. It was a girl, standing32 in the doorway33 between bedroom and salon.
"Hello, Emmy!" she said.
"Hello, Juliet!" said Emmy. And suddenly she felt years older than she had felt a moment ago. Juliet Phayre was such a big baby!
The girl wore a pale pink chiffon thing which she probably considered a dressing34 gown. It was embroidered35 with wild roses and banded with swansdown, and no practical person would have dreamed of keeping it on for a shampoo. Juliet, however, thought herself sufficiently36 protected with a towel over her shoulders—a silvery damask towel under which her bare, girlish arms hung down. Over the towel streamed masses of hair in long, wet strands37, which must be bright golden-brown when dry. These fell—weighted with water—nearly to her knees, and from their curly ends drops poured like unstrung pearls. She was so tall and slender, and brilliant rose-and-white, that she would have looked to a poet like Undine just out of her fountain.
"You extravagant38 thing," Lady West scolded, "to spoil a lovely boudoir gown like that!"
"Simone gets it to-morrow as a perquisite39, with all my old things," Juliet dismissed the subject. "She said you'd been here an age, so I thought I'd better come in. I'll dry my hair before the fire, presently we'll have tea."
So saying, she sat down tailor-fashion on a long, fat velvet40 cushion which lay in front of the low fender.
"Evidently you're not expecting the Duke," laughed Lady West.
"No-o," said the girl. "But I'm expecting a letter from him—or something."
"You haven't got the pearls on show with your other presents, I see," remarked her friend. "I don't blame you! Of course, Parker is doing the watch-dog act outside; and only your bestest pals41 come up. Still, the pearls are frightfully valuable. And you can never tell! But do, do let me see them. I'm dying to!"
"I haven't got them yet," Juliet confessed.
"Not got them?" gasped42 the elder woman. "You're joking. Why"—and she laughed with great gaiety—"one marries Claremanagh for his pearls!"
"Does one?" Juliet took her up. "I know whole populations of females who'd give their pearls to marry him, for—himself!"
This told Emmy West that the bride-to-be knew she had been scratched, and was ready to scratch back. For an instant Emmy hesitated whether to be sweet or sharp, and decided27 to compromise. "By Jove, you are in love, aren't you?" she said.
"I am," Juliet admitted. "I don't care a rap about being a duchess. That sort of thing seems—somehow old-fashioned since the war. And I don't think I ever was a snob43, thank goodness."
Emmy wondered if this were another "dig." She had been a Chicago girl, and only a "tuppenny half-penny" heiress, compared to Juliet Phayre; but she had wanted a title, and had paid all she could afford for a mere44 baronet, such as her few hundred thousand dollars would buy. On the sofa once more facing her low-seated hostess, she looked Juliet full in the eyes; but Juliet's were innocent, even dreamy. "I'd have snapped at my Boy if he'd been just a Tommy when I met him Over There, instead of a perfectly45 gorgeous Guardsman," the girl went on. "But, of course, I do want the pearls! I wouldn't be human if I didn't; everyone talks about them so much, even my Cousin Jack46 Manners, and says they're so marvellous. I expect they are what Pat is sending around this evening."
"Sending around!" repeated the other. "You talk as if—as if they were a box of chocolates! Claremanagh is the careless-est creature on earth, I know. And he has been—er—very careless with the pearls. But I don't think even he would be as bad as that."
"Why not?" asked the girl to whom most jewels meant little. "If he sent them by Old Nick, that dear, quaint47 man of his, they'd be safer than if he brought them himself. I never knew before that he was superstitious48. But he is. It's bad luck for a Claremanagh to see his bride the day before the wedding. Creepy things have happened, it seems, according to an old story! So he said he wasn't running risks. For some reason, he couldn't give me his present before to-day. So that's why the thing is to come by messenger, you see."
"I see," echoed Emmy. "And you're sure the present will be the pearls?"
This was rather an impudent49 question to ask, especially for one who knew the Duke's circumstances; but, for a wonder, Juliet did not seem to mind. She answered quite easily, "Oh, I suppose so. Don't the Claremanagh men always give them to their brides?"
"I believe they have dutifully handed them over so far—for several generations, since the pearls came into their family in that exciting way," said Lady West. "But you know, Peter—I mean Claremanagh—is very independent, and quite—er—a law unto himself."
"Why do you call him 'Peter'?" the girl branched off from the subject. "He has about a dozen names, I know, but I hadn't heard that 'Peter' was one. My selection from the lot is Pat!"
"Oh, 'Peter' was only a silly nickname I made up for him. 'Peter Pan', because he just isn't the sort who ever grows up!" Emmy explained elaborately. "Of course he was a lot with Algy and me the first year I married—before the war spoilt everything for everyone. And then, when I took up Red Cross work in France, after poor Algy—-"
"I know," Juliet ruthlessly interrupted. "That was where and when I came on the scene."
"It was," agreed Emmy, in a flat voice. "You came, you saw, you conquered. But we were talking of the Tsarina pearls. I do hope the Duke is 'delivering the goods', as we say in our country. I don't mind confessing to you, my angel child, I dropped in hoping for a private view."
"Oh, I guessed that the minute Simone told me you were here, and determined50 to wait!" Juliet laughed like a naughty child who dares a "grown-up" to slap it. Emmy's ears tingled51. The girl's tone, though intimate and friendly, told her how unimportant she was in the future Duchess's scheme of things. She had always envied Juliet, and had an old grudge52 against the heiress for refusing her brother, Bill Lowndes. Now she suddenly hated her. Instead of inflicting53 a kittenish scratch or two, she wanted to strike at Juliet Phayre's heart.
"Well," she excused herself, "I never saw the pearls, except—er—at a distance."
"You have seen them, then?" Juliet exclaimed. "How was that? Pat's mother died years before you knew him, and only the Duchess is supposed to wear the pearls, isn't she?"
"Only the Duchess is supposed to wear them."
Juliet sat up straight on the velvet cushion. Her hair was drying beautifully now. The red background of fireglow lit it to flame, so that Lady West saw the slight figure surrounded by a nimbus. "Ever since Pat and I were engaged, you've been hinting at something queer, or secret, about that rope of pearls, Emmy," the girl blazed. "Now, out with it, please! Tell me what you mean."
The elder woman was taken aback. "Don't you know what I mean?" she temporized54.
"No, I don't," snapped Juliet. "But I'm sure it's something unpleasant."
"At least, I had no intention of telling you," Lady West snapped back. "I wouldn't distress55 you for worlds, dear, especially on your wedding eve."
"Wedding eve be—'jizzled!'" inelegantly remarked the bride-elect. "You sound quite early Edwardian! If you don't tell me, I shall think the thing worse than it is."
"You had better ask Claremanagh, or Jack Manners, who is a pal12 of his," said Emmy.
"I can't, till I have an idea what to ask them about."
"Ask whether Lyda Pavoya ever—no, I won't say it!"
"Whether she ever wore the pearls? That's what you were going to say!"
"So you did know?"
"I didn't. And I don't now. I only know what you have in your mind. I don't believe she was allowed to wear the pearls."
"Why should you believe it? And even if she did, it was before you knew Peter—the Duke. Or anyhow, it was before you were engaged. It was when she was dancing for the Polish Relief Fund in Paris, that I saw——"
"You saw what?"
"Saw—her."
"Emmy! You didn't see her wearing the Tsarina pearls? It's not possible."
"Why, of course you must be right, dear. Even though they are blue, they'd be like any other pearls, wouldn't they, to see at a distance."
"That's just what you said about Pat's pearls five minutes ago: that you'd seen them only 'at a distance.'"
Lady West did not reply. She put on a stricken, trapped expression, which went well with her widow's weeds. The two gazed into each other's eyes, each waiting for the other to speak. Neither heard a sound at the door until a respectable voice—such a voice as is never possessed56 save by a British butler or valet—announced "His Grace the Duke of Claremanagh."
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1
salon
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| n.[法]沙龙；客厅；营业性的高级服务室 | |
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suite
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| n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员 | |
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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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chic
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| n./adj.别致(的)，时髦(的)，讲究的 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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7
crumple
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| v.把...弄皱，满是皱痕，压碎，崩溃 | |
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spicy
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| adj.加香料的；辛辣的，有风味的 | |
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apropos
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| adv.恰好地；adj.恰当的；关于 | |
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10
discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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12
pal
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| n.朋友，伙伴，同志；vi.结为友 | |
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13
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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14
rejuvenating
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| 使变得年轻，使恢复活力( rejuvenate的现在分词 ) | |
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15
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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16
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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17
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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18
wriggled
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| v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的过去式和过去分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等） | |
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19
beguiled
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| v.欺骗( beguile的过去式和过去分词 )；使陶醉；使高兴；消磨（时间等） | |
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license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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conspicuously
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| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
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23
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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24
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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25
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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26
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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28
accentuated
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| v.重读( accentuate的过去式和过去分词 )；使突出；使恶化；加重音符号于 | |
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29
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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30
mesh
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| n.网孔，网丝，陷阱；vt.以网捕捉，啮合，匹配；vi.适合； [计算机]网络 | |
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31
complexions
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| 肤色( complexion的名词复数 )； 面色； 局面； 性质 | |
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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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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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34
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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35
embroidered
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| adj．绣花的 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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37
strands
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| n.（线、绳、金属线、毛发等的）股( strand的名词复数 )；缕；海洋、湖或河的)岸；（观点、计划、故事等的）部份v.使滞留，使搁浅( strand的第三人称单数 ) | |
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38
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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39
perquisite
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| n.固定津贴，福利 | |
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40
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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41
pals
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| n.朋友( pal的名词复数 )；老兄；小子；（对男子的不友好的称呼）家伙 | |
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42
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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43
snob
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| n.势利小人，自以为高雅、有学问的人 | |
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44
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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45
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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46
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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47
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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48
superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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49
impudent
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| adj.鲁莽的，卑鄙的，厚颜无耻的 | |
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50
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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51
tingled
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| v.有刺痛感( tingle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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52
grudge
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| n.不满，怨恨，妒嫉；vt.勉强给，不情愿做 | |
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53
inflicting
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的现在分词 ) | |
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54
temporized
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| v.敷衍( temporize的过去式和过去分词 )；拖延；顺应时势；暂时同意 | |
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55
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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56
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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