There is no need to worry you with a list of the guests. You will meet none of them a second time—in my part of the story, at any rate—with the exception of two.
Those two sat on either side of Miss Rachel, who, as queen of the day, was naturally the great attraction of the party. On this occasion she was more particularly the centre-point towards which everybody’s eyes were directed; for (to my lady’s secret annoyance) she wore her wonderful birthday present, which eclipsed all the rest—the Moonstone. It was without any setting when it had been placed in her hands; but that universal genius, Mr. Franklin, had contrived1, with the help of his neat fingers and a little bit of silver wire, to fix it as a brooch in the bosom2 of her white dress. Everybody wondered at the prodigious3 size and beauty of the Diamond, as a matter of course. But the only two of the company who said anything out of the common way about it were those two guests I have mentioned, who sat by Miss Rachel on her right hand and her left.
The guest on her left was Mr. Candy, our doctor at Frizinghall.
This was a pleasant, companionable little man, with the drawback, however, I must own, of being too fond, in season and out of season, of his joke, and of his plunging4 in rather a headlong manner into talk with strangers, without waiting to feel his way first. In society, he was constantly making mistakes, and setting people unintentionally by the ears together. In his medical practice he was a more prudent5 man; picking up his discretion6 (as his enemies said) by a kind of instinct, and proving to be generally right where more carefully conducted doctors turned out to be wrong. What he said about the Diamond to Miss Rachel was said, as usual, by way of a mystification or joke. He gravely entreated7 her (in the interests of science) to let him take it home and burn it. “We will first heat it, Miss Rachel,” says the doctor, “to such and such a degree; then we will expose it to a current of air; and, little by little—puff!—we evaporate the Diamond, and spare you a world of anxiety about the safe keeping of a valuable precious stone!” My lady, listening with rather a careworn8 expression on her face, seemed to wish that the doctor had been in earnest, and that he could have found Miss Rachel zealous9 enough in the cause of science to sacrifice her birthday gift.
The other guest, who sat on my young lady’s right hand, was an eminent10 public character—being no other than the celebrated11 Indian traveller, Mr. Murthwaite, who, at risk of his life, had penetrated12 in disguise where no European had ever set foot before.
This was a long, lean, wiry, brown, silent man. He had a weary look, and a very steady, attentive13 eye. It was rumoured14 that he was tired of the humdrum15 life among the people in our parts, and longing16 to go back and wander off on the tramp again in the wild places of the East. Except what he said to Miss Rachel about her jewel, I doubt if he spoke17 six words or drank so much as a single glass of wine, all through the dinner. The Moonstone was the only object that interested him in the smallest degree. The fame of it seemed to have reached him, in some of those perilous18 Indian places where his wanderings had lain. After looking at it silently for so long a time that Miss Rachel began to get confused, he said to her in his cool immovable way, “If you ever go to India, Miss Verinder, don’t take your uncle’s birthday gift with you. A Hindoo diamond is sometimes part of a Hindoo religion. I know a certain city, and a certain temple in that city, where, dressed as you are now, your life would not be worth five minutes’ purchase.” Miss Rachel, safe in England, was quite delighted to hear of her danger in India. The Bouncers were more delighted still; they dropped their knives and forks with a crash, and burst out together vehemently19, “O! how interesting!” My lady fidgeted in her chair, and changed the subject.
As the dinner got on, I became aware, little by little, that this festival was not prospering20 as other like festivals had prospered21 before it.
Looking back at the birthday now, by the light of what happened afterwards, I am half inclined to think that the cursed Diamond must have cast a blight22 on the whole company. I plied23 them well with wine; and being a privileged character, followed the unpopular dishes round the table, and whispered to the company confidentially24, “Please to change your mind and try it; for I know it will do you good.” Nine times out of ten they changed their minds—out of regard for their old original Betteredge, they were pleased to say—but all to no purpose. There were gaps of silence in the talk, as the dinner got on, that made me feel personally uncomfortable. When they did use their tongues again, they used them innocently, in the most unfortunate manner and to the worst possible purpose. Mr. Candy, the doctor, for instance, said more unlucky things than I ever knew him to say before. Take one sample of the way in which he went on, and you will understand what I had to put up with at the sideboard, officiating as I was in the character of a man who had the prosperity of the festival at heart.
One of our ladies present at dinner was worthy25 Mrs. Threadgall, widow of the late Professor of that name. Talking of her deceased husband perpetually, this good lady never mentioned to strangers that he was deceased. She thought, I suppose, that every able-bodied adult in England ought to know as much as that. In one of the gaps of silence, somebody mentioned the dry and rather nasty subject of human anatomy26; whereupon good Mrs. Threadgall straightway brought in her late husband as usual, without mentioning that he was dead. Anatomy she described as the Professor’s favourite recreation in his leisure hours. As ill-luck would have it, Mr. Candy, sitting opposite (who knew nothing of the deceased gentleman), heard her. Being the most polite of men, he seized the opportunity of assisting the Professor’s anatomical amusements on the spot.
“They have got some remarkably27 fine skeletons lately at the College of Surgeons,” says Mr. Candy, across the table, in a loud cheerful voice. “I strongly recommend the Professor, ma’am, when he next has an hour to spare, to pay them a visit.”
You might have heard a pin fall. The company (out of respect to the Professor’s memory) all sat speechless. I was behind Mrs. Threadgall at the time, plying28 her confidentially with a glass of hock. She dropped her head, and said in a very low voice, “My beloved husband is no more.”
Unluckily Mr. Candy, hearing nothing, and miles away from suspecting the truth, went on across the table louder and politer than ever.
“The Professor may not be aware,” says he, “that the card of a member of the College will admit him, on any day but Sunday, between the hours of ten and four.”
Mrs. Threadgall dropped her head right into her tucker, and, in a lower voice still, repeated the solemn words, “My beloved husband is no more.”
I winked29 hard at Mr. Candy across the table. Miss Rachel touched his arm. My lady looked unutterable things at him. Quite useless! On he went, with a cordiality that there was no stopping anyhow. “I shall be delighted,” says he, “to send the Professor my card, if you will oblige me by mentioning his present address.”
“His present address, sir, is the grave,” says Mrs. Threadgall, suddenly losing her temper, and speaking with an emphasis and fury that made the glasses ring again. “The Professor has been dead these ten years.”
“Oh, good Heavens!” says Mr. Candy. Excepting the Bouncers, who burst out laughing, such a blank now fell on the company, that they might all have been going the way of the Professor, and hailing as he did from the direction of the grave.
So much for Mr. Candy. The rest of them were nearly as provoking in their different ways as the doctor himself. When they ought to have spoken, they didn’t speak; or when they did speak they were perpetually at cross purposes. Mr. Godfrey, though so eloquent30 in public, declined to exert himself in private. Whether he was sulky, or whether he was bashful, after his discomfiture31 in the rose-garden, I can’t say. He kept all his talk for the private ear of the lady (a member of our family) who sat next to him. She was one of his committee-women—a spiritually-minded person, with a fine show of collar-bone and a pretty taste in champagne32; liked it dry, you understand, and plenty of it. Being close behind these two at the sideboard, I can testify, from what I heard pass between them, that the company lost a good deal of very improving conversation, which I caught up while drawing the corks33, and carving34 the mutton, and so forth35. What they said about their Charities I didn’t hear. When I had time to listen to them, they had got a long way beyond their women to be confined, and their women to be rescued, and were disputing on serious subjects. Religion (I understand Mr. Godfrey to say, between the corks and the carving) meant love. And love meant religion. And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new. Earth had some very objectionable people in it; but, to make amends36 for that, all the women in heaven would be members of a prodigious committee that never quarrelled, with all the men in attendance on them as ministering angels. Beautiful! beautiful! But why the mischief37 did Mr. Godfrey keep it all to his lady and himself?
Mr. Franklin again—surely, you will say, Mr. Franklin stirred the company up into making a pleasant evening of it?
Nothing of the sort! He had quite recovered himself, and he was in wonderful force and spirits, Penelope having informed him, I suspect, of Mr. Godfrey’s reception in the rose-garden. But, talk as he might, nine times out of ten he pitched on the wrong subject, or he addressed himself to the wrong person; the end of it being that he offended some, and puzzled all of them. That foreign training of his—those French and German and Italian sides of him, to which I have already alluded38—came out, at my lady’s hospitable39 board, in a most bewildering manner.
What do you think, for instance, of his discussing the lengths to which a married woman might let her admiration40 go for a man who was not her husband, and putting it in his clear-headed witty41 French way to the maiden42 aunt of the Vicar of Frizinghall? What do you think, when he shifted to the German side, of his telling the lord of the manor43, while that great authority on cattle was quoting his experience in the breeding of bulls, that experience, properly understood counted for nothing, and that the proper way to breed bulls was to look deep into your own mind, evolve out of it the idea of a perfect bull, and produce him? What do you say, when our county member, growing hot, at cheese and salad time, about the spread of democracy in England, burst out as follows: “If we once lose our ancient safeguards, Mr. Blake, I beg to ask you, what have we got left?”—what do you say to Mr. Franklin answering, from the Italian point of view: “We have got three things left, sir—Love, Music, and Salad”? He not only terrified the company with such outbreaks as these, but, when the English side of him turned up in due course, he lost his foreign smoothness; and, getting on the subject of the medical profession, said such downright things in ridicule44 of doctors, that he actually put good-humoured little Mr. Candy in a rage.
The dispute between them began in Mr. Franklin being led—I forget how—to acknowledge that he had latterly slept very badly at night. Mr. Candy thereupon told him that his nerves were all out of order and that he ought to go through a course of medicine immediately. Mr. Franklin replied that a course of medicine, and a course of groping in the dark, meant, in his estimation, one and the same thing. Mr. Candy, hitting back smartly, said that Mr Franklin himself was, constitutionally speaking, groping in the dark after sleep, and that nothing but medicine could help him to find it. Mr. Franklin, keeping the ball up on his side, said he had often heard of the blind leading the blind, and now, for the first time, he knew what it meant. In this way, they kept it going briskly, cut and thrust, till they both of them got hot—Mr. Candy, in particular, so completely losing his self-control, in defence of his profession, that my lady was obliged to interfere45, and forbid the dispute to go on. This necessary act of authority put the last extinguisher on the spirits of the company. The talk spurted46 up again here and there, for a minute or two at a time; but there was a miserable47 lack of life and sparkle in it. The Devil (or the Diamond) possessed48 that dinner-party; and it was a relief to everybody when my mistress rose, and gave the ladies the signal to leave the gentlemen over their wine.
I had just ranged the decanters in a row before old Mr. Ablewhite (who represented the master of the house), when there came a sound from the terrace which, startled me out of my company manners on the instant. Mr. Franklin and I looked at each other; it was the sound of the Indian drum. As I live by bread, here were the jugglers returning to us with the return of the Moonstone to the house!
As they rounded the corner of the terrace, and came in sight, I hobbled out to warn them off. But, as ill-luck would have it, the two Bouncers were beforehand with me. They whizzed out on to the terrace like a couple of skyrockets, wild to see the Indians exhibit their tricks. The other ladies followed; the gentlemen came out on their side. Before you could say, “Lord bless us!” the rogues49 were making their salaams50; and the Bouncers were kissing the pretty little boy.
Mr. Franklin got on one side of Miss Rachel, and I put myself behind her. If our suspicions were right, there she stood, innocent of all knowledge of the truth, showing the Indians the Diamond in the bosom of her dress!
I can’t tell you what tricks they performed, or how they did it. What with the vexation about the dinner, and what with the provocation51 of the rogues coming back just in the nick of time to see the jewel with their own eyes, I own I lost my head. The first thing that I remember noticing was the sudden appearance on the scene of the Indian traveller, Mr. Murthwaite. Skirting the half-circle in which the gentlefolks stood or sat, he came quietly behind the jugglers and spoke to them on a sudden in the language of their own country.
If he had pricked52 them with a bayonet, I doubt if the Indians could have started and turned on him with a more tigerish quickness than they did, on hearing the first words that passed his lips. The next moment they were bowing and salaaming53 to him in their most polite and snaky way. After a few words in the unknown tongue had passed on either side, Mr. Murthwaite withdrew as quietly as he had approached. The chief Indian, who acted as interpreter, thereupon wheeled about again towards the gentlefolks. I noticed that the fellow’s coffee-coloured face had turned grey since Mr. Murthwaite had spoken to him. He bowed to my lady, and informed her that the exhibition was over. The Bouncers, indescribably disappointed, burst out with a loud “O!” directed against Mr. Murthwaite for stopping the performance. The chief Indian laid his hand humbly54 on his breast, and said a second time that the juggling55 was over. The little boy went round with the hat. The ladies withdrew to the drawing-room; and the gentlemen (excepting Mr. Franklin and Mr. Murthwaite) returned to their wine. I and the footman followed the Indians, and saw them safe off the premises56.
Going back by way of the shrubbery, I smelt57 tobacco, and found Mr. Franklin and Mr. Murthwaite (the latter smoking a cheroot) walking slowly up and down among the trees. Mr. Franklin beckoned58 to me to join them.
“This,” says Mr. Franklin, presenting me to the great traveller, “is Gabriel Betteredge, the old servant and friend of our family of whom I spoke to you just now. Tell him, if you please, what you have just told me.”
Mr. Murthwaite took his cheroot out of his mouth, and leaned, in his weary way, against the trunk of a tree.
“Mr. Betteredge,” he began, “those three Indians are no more jugglers than you and I are.”
Here was a new surprise! I naturally asked the traveller if he had ever met with the Indians before.
“Never,” says Mr. Murthwaite; “but I know what Indian juggling really is. All you have seen tonight is a very bad and clumsy imitation of it. Unless, after long experience, I am utterly59 mistaken, those men are high-caste Brahmins. I charged them with being disguised, and you saw how it told on them, clever as the Hindoo people are in concealing60 their feelings. There is a mystery about their conduct that I can’t explain. They have doubly sacrificed their caste—first, in crossing the sea; secondly61, in disguising themselves as jugglers. In the land they live in that is a tremendous sacrifice to make. There must be some very serious motive62 at the bottom of it, and some justification63 of no ordinary kind to plead for them, in recovery of their caste, when they return to their own country.”
I was struck dumb. Mr. Murthwaite went on with his cheroot. Mr. Franklin, after what looked to me like a little private veering64 about between the different sides of his character, broke the silence as follows:
“I feel some hesitation65, Mr. Murthwaite, in troubling you with family matters, in which you can have no interest and which I am not very willing to speak of out of our own circle. But, after what you have said, I feel bound, in the interests of Lady Verinder and her daughter, to tell you something which may possibly put the clue into your hands. I speak to you in confidence; you will oblige me, I am sure, by not forgetting that?”
With this preface, he told the Indian traveller all that he had told me at the Shivering Sand. Even the immovable Mr. Murthwaite was so interested in what he heard, that he let his cheroot go out.
“Now,” says Mr. Franklin, when he had done, “what does your experience say?”
“My experience,” answered the traveller, “says that you have had more narrow escapes of your life, Mr. Franklin Blake, than I have had of mine; and that is saying a great deal.”
It was Mr. Franklin’s turn to be astonished now.
“Is it really as serious as that?” he asked.
“In my opinion it is,” answered Mr. Murthwaite. “I can’t doubt, after what you have told me, that the restoration of the Moonstone to its place on the forehead of the Indian idol66, is the motive and the justification of that sacrifice of caste which I alluded to just now. Those men will wait their opportunity with the patience of cats, and will use it with the ferocity of tigers. How you have escaped them I can’t imagine,” says the eminent traveller, lighting67 his cheroot again, and staring hard at Mr. Franklin. “You have been carrying the Diamond backwards68 and forwards, here and in London, and you are still a living man! Let us try and account for it. It was daylight, both times, I suppose, when you took the jewel out of the bank in London?”
“Broad daylight,” says Mr. Franklin.
“And plenty of people in the streets?”
“Plenty.”
“You settled, of course, to arrive at Lady Verinder’s house at a certain time? It’s a lonely country between this and the station. Did you keep your appointment?”
“No. I arrived four hours earlier than my appointment.”
“I beg to congratulate you on that proceeding69! When did you take the Diamond to the bank at the town here?”
“I took it an hour after I had brought it to this house—and three hours before anybody was prepared for seeing me in these parts.”
“I beg to congratulate you again! Did you bring it back here alone?”
“No. I happened to ride back with my cousins and the groom70.”
“I beg to congratulate you for the third time! If you ever feel inclined to travel beyond the civilised limits, Mr. Blake, let me know, and I will go with you. You are a lucky man.”
Here I struck in. This sort of thing didn’t at all square with my English ideas.
“You don’t really mean to say, sir,” I asked, “that they would have taken Mr. Franklin’s life, to get their Diamond, if he had given them the chance?”
“Do you smoke, Mr. Betteredge?” says the traveller.
“Yes, sir.
“Do you care much for the ashes left in your pipe when you empty it?”
“No, sir.”
“In the country those men came from, they care just as much about killing71 a man, as you care about emptying the ashes out of your pipe. If a thousand lives stood between them and the getting back of their Diamond—and if they thought they could destroy those lives without discovery—they would take them all. The sacrifice of caste is a serious thing in India, if you like. The sacrifice of life is nothing at all.”
I expressed my opinion upon this, that they were a set of murdering thieves. Mr. Murthwaite expressed his opinion that they were a wonderful people. Mr. Franklin, expressing no opinion at all, brought us back to the matter in hand.
“They have seen the Moonstone on Miss Verinder’s dress,” he said. “What is to be done?”
“What your uncle threatened to do,” answered Mr. Murthwaite. “Colonel Herncastle understood the people he had to deal with. Send the Diamond tomorrow (under guard of more than one man) to be cut up at Amsterdam. Make half a dozen diamonds of it, instead of one. There is an end of its sacred identity as The Moonstone—and there is an end of the conspiracy72.”
Mr. Franklin turned to me.
“There is no help for it,” he said. “We must speak to Lady Verinder tomorrow.”
“What about tonight, sir?” I asked. “Suppose the Indians come back?”
Mr. Murthwaite answered me before Mr. Franklin could speak.
“The Indians won’t risk coming back tonight,” he said. “The direct way is hardly ever the way they take to anything—let alone a matter like this, in which the slightest mistake might be fatal to their reaching their end.”
“But suppose the rogues are bolder than you think, sir?” I persisted.
“In that case,” says Mr. Murthwaite, “let the dogs loose. Have you got any big dogs in the yard?”
“Two, sir. A mastiff and a bloodhound.”
“They will do. In the present emergency, Mr. Betteredge, the mastiff and the bloodhound have one great merit—they are not likely to be troubled with your scruples73 about the sanctity of human life.”
The strumming of the piano reached us from the drawing-room, as he fired that shot at me. He threw away his cheroot, and took Mr. Franklin’s arm, to go back to the ladies. I noticed that the sky was clouding over fast, as I followed them to the house. Mr. Murthwaite noticed it too. He looked round at me, in his dry, droning way, and said:
“The Indians will want their umbrellas, Mr. Betteredge, tonight!”
It was all very well for him to joke. But I was not an eminent traveller—and my way in this world had not led me into playing ducks and drakes with my own life, among thieves and murderers in the outlandish places of the earth. I went into my own little room, and sat down in my chair in a perspiration74, and wondered helplessly what was to be done next. In this anxious frame of mind, other men might have ended by working themselves up into a fever; I ended in a different way. I lit my pipe, and took a turn at Robinson Crusoe.
Before I had been at it five minutes, I came to this amazing bit—page one hundred and sixty-one—as follows:
“Fear of Danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than Danger itself, when apparent to the Eyes; and we find the Burthen of Anxiety greater, by much, than the Evil which we are anxious about.”
The man who doesn’t believe in Robinson Crusoe, after that, is a man with a screw loose in his understanding, or a man lost in the mist of his own self-conceit! Argument is thrown away upon him; and pity is better reserved for some person with a livelier faith.
I was far on with my second pipe, and still lost in admiration of that wonderful book, when Penelope (who had been handing round the tea) came in with her report from the drawing-room. She had left the Bouncers singing a duet—words beginning with a large “O,” and music to correspond. She had observed that my lady made mistakes in her game of whist for the first time in our experience of her. She had seen the great traveller asleep in a corner. She had overheard Mr. Franklin sharpening his wits on Mr. Godfrey, at the expense of Ladies’ Charities in general; and she had noticed that Mr. Godfrey hit him back again rather more smartly than became a gentleman of his benevolent75 character. She had detected Miss Rachel, apparently76 engaged in appeasing77 Mrs. Threadgall by showing her some photographs, and really occupied in stealing looks at Mr. Franklin, which no intelligent lady’s maid could misinterpret for a single instant. Finally, she had missed Mr. Candy, the doctor, who had mysteriously disappeared from the drawing-room, and had then mysteriously returned, and entered into conversation with Mr. Godfrey. Upon the whole, things were prospering better than the experience of the dinner gave us any right to expect. If we could only hold on for another hour, old Father Time would bring up their carriages, and relieve us of them altogether.
Everything wears off in this world; and even the comforting effect of Robinson Crusoe wore off, after Penelope left me. I got fidgety again, and resolved on making a survey of the grounds before the rain came. Instead of taking the footman, whose nose was human, and therefore useless in any emergency, I took the bloodhound with me. His nose for a stranger was to be depended on. We went all round the premises, and out into the road—and returned as wise as we went, having discovered no such thing as a lurking78 human creature anywhere.
The arrival of the carriages was the signal for the arrival of the rain. It poured as if it meant to pour all night. With the exception of the doctor, whose gig was waiting for him, the rest of the company went home snugly79, under cover, in close carriages. I told Mr. Candy that I was afraid he would get wet through. He told me, in return, that he wondered I had arrived at my time of life, without knowing that a doctor’s skin was waterproof80. So he drove away in the rain, laughing over his own little joke; and so we got rid of our dinner company.
The next thing to tell is the story of the night.
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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entreated
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| 恳求，乞求( entreat的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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careworn
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zealous
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| adj.狂热的，热心的 | |
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eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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rumoured
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humdrum
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longing
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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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perilous
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vehemently
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prospering
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prospered
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blight
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plied
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confidentially
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worthy
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anatomy
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remarkably
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plying
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| v.使用（工具）( ply的现在分词 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意 | |
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winked
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| v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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discomfiture
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| n.崩溃；大败；挫败；困惑 | |
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champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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corks
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| n.脐梅衣；软木( cork的名词复数 )；软木塞 | |
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carving
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| n.雕刻品，雕花 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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amends
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| n. 赔偿 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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witty
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| adj.机智的，风趣的 | |
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maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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spurted
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| （液体，火焰等）喷出，（使）涌出( spurt的过去式和过去分词 )； （短暂地）加速前进，冲刺 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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rogues
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| n.流氓( rogue的名词复数 )；无赖；调皮捣蛋的人；离群的野兽 | |
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salaams
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| （穆斯林的）额手礼，问安，敬礼( salaam的名词复数 ) | |
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provocation
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| n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因 | |
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pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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salaaming
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| 行额手礼( salaam的现在分词 ) | |
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humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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juggling
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| n. 欺骗, 杂耍(=jugglery) adj. 欺骗的, 欺诈的 动词juggle的现在分词 | |
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premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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smelt
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| v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼 | |
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beckoned
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| 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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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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concealing
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
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secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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veering
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| n.改变的；犹豫的；顺时针方向转向；特指使船尾转向上风来改变航向v.（尤指交通工具）改变方向或路线( veer的现在分词 )；（指谈话内容、人的行为或观点）突然改变；（指风） （在北半球按顺时针方向、在南半球按逆时针方向）逐渐转向；风向顺时针转 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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groom
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| vt.给（马、狗等）梳毛，照料，使...整洁 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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75
benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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appeasing
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| 安抚，抚慰( appease的现在分词 )； 绥靖（满足另一国的要求以避免战争） | |
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78
lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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79
snugly
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| adv.紧贴地；贴身地；暖和舒适地；安适地 | |
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waterproof
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| n.防水材料；adj.防水的；v.使...能防水 | |
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