Slyne's first sensation when he woke and saw the storm, from behind the double windows of his comfortable rooms in the Warder's Tower, was one of relief, since it would surely serve to stave off inconvenient2 visitors. He had been afraid that the news the beacon3 had blazoned4 the night before would travel altogether too fast and too far to suit his plans; it would have been awkward in the extreme to be inundated5 with curious callers in a position practically carried by assault, only tenable by stealth and while no one in active authority should challenge it.
The coming of Herries, the factor, had opened his eyes to that. For the old fellow, ill as he was, had shown a most annoying inclination7 to cross-question Slyne about various dry legal details; and Slyne had only been able to put him off temporarily by promising8 that her ladyship's own man of law would go into all such matters with him in the morning.
Now, fortunately for Slyne and his friends, the factor need not be further considered for some little time to come, if indeed at all. The fever in him had refused to yield to any of Mrs. M'Kissock's simple medicaments, and he was delirious9. He seemed very likely, indeed, to die unless he were very lucky. Slyne did not fail to congratulate himself on that score also, as he sat up in bed to reach for a cigarette after his late breakfast and contemplate10 the cuffs11 of his expensive pink silk pajamas12.
The rest of the company in the castle he thought he could find means to control, for the present, at any rate, although he did not under-estimate the chances of trouble with his two disaffected13 associates, who had already displayed such a lamentable14 tendency toward open mutiny. But, on the whole, he felt satisfied that, if he could only keep matters running smoothly15 during the days that must still elapse before the Court of Chancery should resume its usual routine and finally settle the Jura succession on Sallie, he would by then have managed to make his own footing there absolutely secure.
He snuggled back between the blankets again, with an inexpressible sensation of comfort, and, watching the blue spirals of smoke curl upwards16 from under his moustache, forgot all the anxious uncertainties17 and the ever more painful pinch of the present in contemplative anticipations18 of that fair future which he had so carefully planned for himself. Not even the fact that he had almost exhausted19 his cash resources could worry him when he thought of the wealth that was to be his as soon as he should be safely married to Sallie; and until then he could command unlimited20 local credit, on her behalf.
She was Lady Josceline Justice already. She would be Countess of Jura in her own right as soon as the Court of Chancery should admit her identity. She would have ten millions of dollars in ready money for him to spend and a quarter of a million for annual income. He had been a poor man all his life, but now—he looked luxuriously21 out at the snow and the storm.
"Mr. Jasper Slyne and the Countess of Jura," he said aloud, and smiled and curled his moustache.
He rose by and by and betook himself to his dressing-room, whistling a cheery tune22. "And although I don't want to rush things," said he to himself as he stepped briskly into his bath, "if either Dove or that fat suicide makes any more fuss, I'll have to show 'em my teeth. They must both keep to the bargains we struck. And I think I've made things pretty safe for myself by now."
When he at length strolled downstairs, infinitely23 refreshed after his long rest, he found Mr. Jobling and Captain Dove in close conclave24 in the library. And he did not like their looks in the least or their sudden silence at sight of him. He felt certain that they had been conspiring25 against him, and did not delay in commencing a counter-attack.
"'Morning, Dove. 'Morning, Jobling," said he casually26, as he stopped to select a cigar from the box on the table. "Change of weather, eh! You'll have a cold journey back to London, Jobling."
Mr. Jobling looked very coldly across at him. "I do not propose to return to London at present, Mr. Slyne," he replied. "Mr. Spettigrew will look after everything there."
"You're no more use to me here," said Slyne bluntly, "and you may be of some service in London."
"You are no longer a client of mine, Mr. Slyne," the lawyer retorted, no doubt emboldened27 by the promise of Captain Dove's unswerving support. "I can no longer act for you with any feeling of confidence—since I have found out how unfairly you have attempted to treat Captain Dove."
Slyne understood that open war was declared. "I won't be a client of yours for long, if you're going to be troublesome," he affirmed. "I think you've got a little out of your depth again, my friend. I don't think you'll find it will pay you to take that tone."
Mr. Jobling began to splutter, and Captain Dove evidently felt impelled28 to come to his aid.
"You take too much on yourself, Slyne," said he, eyeing that gentleman with extreme disfavour. "You seem to think you're the whole show here, though you're nothing but a hanger-on, as I've told you before. Let's have a good deal less of it, or—We can get on just as well, or even better—without you, you know."
Slyne turned a contemptuous stare on him. "So that's the idea now, is it!" he remarked, without any sign of heat. "You two think it's a case of dog eat dog now, do you! And—after you've got rid of me, who picked you both up out of the gutter29, you'll be at each other's throats. You're a great pair!"
His nonchalance30 incensed31 the old man, as he had intended it should.
"I want none of your damned lip," declared Captain Dove, glaring at him, "you precious upstart! You're nothing but a beggar on horseback yourself, for all your grand airs. Me and this other gentleman are both sick-tired of them. You're one too many—"
"I'm one too many for you two, at any rate; and you may both stake your last cent on that," Slyne told him with a composure admirable under the circumstances. "You surely don't imagine, do you, that I'm here on any such unsafe footing as you are! I thought you knew me well enough, Dove, to be sure that I'd leave you no opportunity to go back on your bargain with me."
"To hell with you and your bargains!" cried Captain Dove: and then, restraining his rage, lowered his voice again. "The mistake you've always made with me, Slyne, has been to take me for an old fool—as you've very often called me to my face. You think I'm in my dotage32. But—I'm not too old to show you a trick or two yet, if you and I come to grips. And, as for being such a fool as you seem to think me—you wait and see! I've a card or two up my sleeve, Mr. Slyne, that'll maybe euchre your game for you, if you try to bluff33 too high!"
Slyne sat back and studied the old man's face. Captain Dove had made that same mysterious threat on board the Olive Branch in Genoa, before they had started out on their present adventure. It had disconcerted Slyne then. It disconcerted him still more now.
"Don't you think that you're a little inclined to overrate your importance and—er—capacity, Mr. Slyne?" put in Mr. Jobling acidly during the pause, involuntary on Slyne's part. "All your ideas are no doubt based on the documents we mutually signed in Monte Carlo; and you are probably not aware, as I am—now that I have a clearer insight into your motives—that they amount to neither more nor less than a conspiracy34 to defraud35. You would be well advised, believe me, to put them all in the fire."
Slyne turned on him in an instant. "Now, see here, my friend! I want you to understand, once and for all, that I've got you safe where I want you, and that, if I hear much more from you, you'll find yourself in a very unpleasant fix. You wouldn't look well at all in a striped suit—or I believe it's the broad-arrow pattern they supply in the prisons here. And that's what you'll come to, believe me, unless you walk the line I've laid down for you. You can't embezzle36 trust funds, you know, and pay the interest with promises to be met as soon as you lay your hands on some of the plunder37 here, without running a very dangerous risk indeed. Why, even the car you sold me in Genoa was another man's property—and I hold your receipt for the price I paid you for it.
"So shut up," he concluded sharply, and proceeded to deal with Captain Dove as if the lawyer had not been there.
Mr. Jobling's flaccid face had become of the colour of mottled clay. He was respiring stertorously38, through his mouth. His eyes had grown blood-shot. His back-bone seemed to have given way. He sat huddled39 up, silent, staring at Slyne with eyes full of impotent fear.
"You talk to me about bluffing40!" Slyne was saying to Captain Dove, who also seemed to have grown suddenly apprehensive41 of some unforeseen mischance. "You talk to me about bluffing, although I've played a straight game with you from the start and stuck to our bargain even against my own interests. Wait a minute. Listen to me—and then you can talk till you're tired.
"Do you want to keep your clever new friend there company in his cell? How long do you think you'd be left at liberty if I mentioned to the authorities that you're the same man who—"
"Stop, now, curse you!" roared Captain Dove and so drowned the disclosures which Slyne seemed minded to make. "And don't go too far with me, or—"
Slyne looked without winking42 into the muzzle43 of the revolver which the old man had produced in an instant and levelled at him. "You talk to me about bluffing!" he said again, and laughed, without mirth. "You'd be better occupied, Dove, in making sure that your own bluff isn't called. You've done your best for a week past to give yourself away to the police, and—if you manage that in the end, you won't have me to blame, remember. I'm not the sort of yellow dog you seem to want to make yourself out."
He paused, to let that vitriolic44 criticism sink in, and to consider just how far he might safely go. Captain Dove had laid his revolver down but kept a hand on its butt45. He was watching Slyne intently.
"I wish you could get it into your head," the latter resumed a little more peaceably, "that beggar-my-neighbour isn't the easiest game to play with me. And that I've got brains enough to take care of myself.
"If you and your cute new friend there were to be put away to-morrow, I'd stay here safe and sound. I've nothing to fear.
"I've kept my bargain with you both so far, and I'm quite willing to complete it. I'm going to see, at the same time, that you keep yours with me. You'll each get your promised share of the profits here, no more and no less; and then—I'll be done with you. Till then—don't go too far with me," he finished warningly.
"To hear you talk, any one would think you owned Loquhariot already!" remarked Captain Dove. "I'd like to hear what Sallie has to say about it all now."
"I'll get her to tell you at once, if you like," Slyne answered evenly and, rising, rang the bell.
"Ask her ladyship to favour us with her company for a few minutes," he instructed the footman who answered that summons, "or if she'd prefer to receive us in her own room." Then he lay back in his chair again, his wits busily at work. He could not feel quite sure himself what Sallie would have to say about it all now; but—he meant to master her also.
The servant, however, came back with word that her ladyship had gone out. And at that Slyne scowled46. It was at a most inopportune moment for him that Sallie had taken a liberty of which she would not have dreamed a few days before; and, furthermore, it did not fit in with his plans at all to have her making such use of her new-found freedom; there was no telling whom she might meet—there was that fellow Carthew, for instance!
"Which way did her ladyship go, do you know?" he called after the footman, as casually as he could.
"To the village, I think, sir," the man replied, and he rose, yawning, to look discontentedly out at the wintry landscape. It was very beautiful in the brisk morning sunshine, but also very wet underfoot.
"I'll stroll down the road after her," he announced, "and fetch her back. You can be packing up in the meantime, Jobling. The steamer south sails early in the afternoon."
He did not hesitate to leave the two conspirators49 alone together again; he judged that he had succeeded in cowing them both. He even smiled to himself on his way outdoors.
"I thought I was done for when I met Dubois," he reflected, perfectly50 self-satisfied, "but—I was really in luck. And that was a most opportune47 chat I had with Mullins in London, too. I've got Jobling fairly fixed51. If I can't manage the old man—I'm a bigger fool than I take myself for. And I've made things all right for myself with Sallie, or I'm mistaken."
He paused in the main hall to look appreciatively about him while a servant was fetching his coat and cap from the cloak-room. The sun was streaming in through the stained glass of a lofty, mullioned window, the heart of each of whose panels showed in vivid scarlet52 against the light a clenched53 hand holding a dagger54, the Jura crest55.
"They won it all that way," said Slyne to himself, and drew a deep breath of contentment as he looked round the noble hall again. He felt very proud of the place already, and only wished that some of his former friends could have seen him there.
Outside, beyond the drawbridge, he halted to look admiringly up at the massive, ivy-clad frontage of the Main Keep, with its crenellated ramparts and narrow fighting-windows and bartizan. Then he turned with a high heart toward the road that runs between hazel thickets56 and clumps57 of alder58 or silver birch down the long hill to the village and the seashore. He was humming a contented48 tune to himself as he tramped through the melting snow.
He had not far to seek Sallie. Within the open doorway59 of the first cottage he came to, he caught sight of her beside the peat-fire with a laughing child on her lap and its proud mother smiling beside her.
He walked in on them, and she looked up at him very happily as he entered. The mother curtsied, which pleased him. So that he made himself most agreeable to them both, and did not take Sallie away at once as he had intended. He was quite gratified to see how graciously she filled the part of Lady Bountiful. He wanted her to be popular among the villagers, and meant to make himself popular as well. He was only afraid that her ignorance of the conventions might lead her into making herself too cheap.
She was only a young girl yet, and he knew that her innate60 purity of mind had never been sullied nor her sweet, loyal, lovable nature in any way warped61 amid the strange surroundings and circumstances in which she had lived till then. She was as happy playing with the cottager's child as she would have been in a palace. But—the daughter of Torquil Fitz-J. Justice, Earl of Jura and Baron62 St. Just of Justicehall and Loquhariot, must not make herself too cheap, thought Slyne. And presently he suggested to her that it was time to be going.
She rose, a little reluctantly, and followed him; while he bowed patronisingly to the fisherman's wife—just as he imagined a grand gentleman would do.
He did not demur63 when Sallie turned down the village street instead of up-hill again. He was quite pleased to show himself there at her side—and touch his cap condescendingly in response to the salutations of all who passed. He only omitted that very casual courtesy to Justin Carthew, standing64 at the door of the Inn.
"I suppose there's no doubt that Mr. Carthew was wrongly informed by his lawyers, Jasper?" Sallie asked him a few minutes later.
"No doubt in the world," Slyne answered her. "He's of no account at all now. The best thing he can do now for himself is to clear off back to America, where he belongs.
"And—there's another thing, my dear. Captain Dove and that fat ass6 Jobling have got to go too. We'll never have any peace while they're hanging about. But they're both inclined to be troublesome, and I want you to back me up against them.
"It was Captain Dove who ordered the beacon to be lighted last night. And—Lord only knows how much annoyance65 that may cause us yet! In fact, they're a pretty difficult pair to handle. So, when we get back to the castle, I want you to tell them that you intend to keep your promise to me; I'll be better able to manage them then, you see.
"You haven't forgotten just what you promised me, have you?"
"No, Jasper," answered the girl, and gazed across the wind-swept loch with fond, despairing eyes, "I haven't forgotten. And—I'll keep my promise, if—when the time comes."
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1
foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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beacon
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| n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔 | |
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blazoned
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| v.广布( blazon的过去式和过去分词 )；宣布；夸示；装饰 | |
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inundated
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| v.淹没( inundate的过去式和过去分词 )；（洪水般地）涌来；充满；给予或交予（太多事物）使难以应付 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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cuffs
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| n.袖口( cuff的名词复数 )v.掌打，拳打( cuff的第三人称单数 ) | |
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pajamas
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| n.睡衣裤 | |
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disaffected
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| adj.（政治上）不满的，叛离的 | |
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lamentable
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| adj.令人惋惜的，悔恨的 | |
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smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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uncertainties
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| 无把握( uncertainty的名词复数 )； 不确定； 变化不定； 无把握、不确定的事物 | |
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anticipations
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| 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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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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luxuriously
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| adv.奢侈地，豪华地 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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conclave
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| n.秘密会议，红衣主教团 | |
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conspiring
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| 密谋( conspire的现在分词 )； 搞阴谋； （事件等）巧合； 共同导致 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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emboldened
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| v.鼓励，使有胆量( embolden的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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impelled
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| 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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gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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nonchalance
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| n.冷淡，漠不关心 | |
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incensed
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| 盛怒的 | |
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dotage
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| n.年老体衰；年老昏聩 | |
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bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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defraud
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| vt.欺骗，欺诈 | |
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embezzle
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| vt.贪污，盗用；挪用(公款；公物等) | |
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plunder
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| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
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stertorously
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huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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bluffing
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| n. 威吓，唬人 动词bluff的现在分词形式 | |
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apprehensive
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| adj.担心的，恐惧的，善于领会的 | |
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winking
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| 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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muzzle
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| n.鼻口部；口套；枪(炮)口；vt.使缄默 | |
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vitriolic
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| adj.硫酸的，尖刻的 | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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scowled
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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opportune
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| adj.合适的，适当的 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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conspirators
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| n.共谋者，阴谋家( conspirator的名词复数 ) | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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dagger
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| n.匕首，短剑，剑号 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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alder
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| n.赤杨树 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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innate
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| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
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warped
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| adj.反常的；乖戾的；（变）弯曲的；变形的v.弄弯，变歪( warp的过去式和过去分词 )；使（行为等）不合情理，使乖戾， | |
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62
baron
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| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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63
demur
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| v．表示异议，反对 | |
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64
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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65
annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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