Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”
The afternoon sun was lowering towards a heavy bank of clouds hanging still and sullen4 over the Mediterranean5. A mistral was blowing. The last yellow rays shone fiercely upon the towering coast of Corsica, and the windows of the village of Olmeta glittered like gold.
There are two Olmetas in Corsica, both in the north, both on the west coast, both perched high like an eagle's nest, both looking down upon those lashed6 waters of the Mediterranean, which are not the waters that poets sing of, for they are as often white as they are blue; they are seldom glassy except in the height of summer and sailors tell that they are as treacherous7 as any waters of the earth. Neither aneroid nor weather-wisdom may, as a matter of fact, tell when a mistral will arise, how it will blow, how veer8, how drop and rise, and drop again. For it will blow one day beneath a cloudless sky, lashing9 the whole sea white like milk, and blow harder to-morrow under racing10 clouds.
The great chestnut11 trees in and around Olmeta groaned12 and strained in the grip of their lifelong foe13. The small door, the tiny windows, of every house were rigorously closed. The whole place had a wind-swept air despite the heavy foliage14. Even the roads, and notably15 the broad “Place,” had been swept clean and dustless. And in the middle of the “Place,” between the fountain and the church steps, a man lay dead upon his face.
It is as well to state here, once for all, that we are dealing16 with Olmeta-di-Tuda, and not that other Olmeta—the virtuous17, di Capocorso, in fact, which would shudder18 at the thought of a dead man lying on its “Place,” before the windows of the very Mairie, under the shadow of the church. For Cap Corse is the good boy of Corsica, where men think sorrowfully of the wilder communes to the south, and raise their eyebrows19 at the very mention of Corte and Sartene—where, at all events, the women have for husbands, men—and not degenerate20 Pisan vine-snippers.
It was not so long ago either. For the man might have been alive to-day, though he would have been old and bent21 no doubt; for he was a thick-set man, and must have been strong. He had, indeed, carried his lead up from the road that runs by the Guadelle river. Was he not to be traced all the way up the short cut through the olive terraces by one bloody22 footprint at regular intervals23? You could track his passage across the “Place,” towards the fountain of which he had fallen short like a poisoned rat that tries to reach water and fails.
He lay quite alone, still grasping the gun which he had never laid aside since boyhood. No one went to him; no one had attempted to help him. He lay as he had fallen, with a thin stream of blood running slowly from one trouser-leg. For this was Corsican work—that is to say, dirty work—from behind a rock, in the back, at close range, without warning or mercy, as honest men would be ashamed to shoot the merest beast of the forest. It was as likely as not a charge of buck-shot low down in the body, leaving the rest to hemorrhage or gangrene.
All Olmeta knew of it, and every man took care that it should be no business of his. Several had approached, pipe in mouth, and looked at the dead man without comment; but all had gone away again, idly, indifferently. For in this the most beautiful of the islands, human life is held cheaper than in any land of Europe.
Some one, it was understood, had gone to tell the gendarmes25 down at St. Florent. There was no need to send and tell his wife—half a dozen women were racing through the olive groves26 to get the first taste of that. Perhaps some one had gone towards Oletta to meet the Abbé Susini, whose business in a measure this must be.
The sun suddenly dipped behind the heavy bank of clouds and the mountains darkened. Although it lies in the very centre of the Mediterranean, Corsica is a gloomy land, and the summits of her high mountains are more often covered than clear. It is a land of silence and brooding quiet. The women are seldom gay; the men, in their heavy clothes of dark corduroy, have little to say for themselves. Some of them were standing27 now in the shadow of the great trees, smoking their pipes in silence, and looking with a studied indifference28 at nothing. Each was prepared to swear before a jury at the Bastia assizes that he knew nothing of the “accident,” as it is here called, to Pietro Andrei, and had not seen him crawl up to Olmeta to die. Indeed, Pietro Andrei's death seemed to be nobody's business, though we are told that not so much as a sparrow may fall unheeded.
The Abbé Susini was coming now—a little fiery29 man, with the walk of one who was slightly bow-legged, though his cassock naturally concealed30 this defect. He was small and not too broad, with a narrow face and clean, straight features—something of the Spaniard, something of the Greek, nothing Italian, nothing French. In a word, this was a Corsican, which is to say that he was different from any other European race, and would, as sure as there is corn in Egypt, be overbearing, masterful, impossible. He was, of course, clean shaven, as brown as old oak, with little flashing black eyes. His cassock was a good one, and his hat, though dusty, shapely and new. But his whole bearing threw, as it were, into the observer's face the suggestion that the habit does not make the priest.
“Quite like old times,” he said to himself, remembering the days of Louis Philippe. He knelt down beside the dead man, and perhaps the attitude reminded him of his calling; for he fell to praying, and made the gesture of the cross over Andrei's head. Then suddenly he leapt to his feet, and shook his lean fist out towards the valley and St. Florent, as if he knew whence this trouble came.
“Provided they would keep their work in their own commune,” he cried, “instead of bringing disgrace on a parish that has not had the gendarmes this—this—”
“Three days,” added one of the bystanders, who had drawn32 near. And he said it with a certain pride, as of one well pleased to belong to a virtuous community.
But the priest was not listening. He had already turned aside in his quick, jerky way; for he was a comparatively young man. He was looking through the olives towards the south.
“It is the women,” he said, and his face suddenly hardened. He was impulsive33, it appeared—quick to feel for others, fiery in his anger, hasty in his judgment34.
From the direction in which he and the bystanders looked, came the hum of many voices, and the high, incessant35 shrieks36 of one who seemed demented. Presently a confused procession appeared from the direction of the south, hurrying through the narrow street now called the Rue38 Carnot. It was headed by a woman, who led a little child, running and stumbling as he ran. At her heels a number of women hurried, confusedly shouting, moaning, and wailing39. The men stood waiting for them in dead silence—a characteristic scene. The leading woman seemed to be superior to her neighbours, for she wore a black silk handkerchief on her head instead of a white or coloured cotton. It is almost a mantilla, and marks as clear a social distinction in Corsica as does that head-dress in Spain. She dragged at the child, and scarce turned her head when he fell and scrambled40 as best he could to his feet. He laughed and crowed with delight, remembering last year's carnival41 with that startling, photographic memory of early childhood which never forgets.
At every few steps the woman gave a shriek37 as if she were suffering some intermittent42 agony which caught her at regular intervals. At the sight of the crowd she gave a quick cry of despair, and ran forward, leaving her child sprawling43 on the road. She knelt by the dead man's side with shriek after shriek, and seemed to lose all control over herself, for she gave way to those strange gestures of despair of which many read in novels and a few in the Scriptures44, and which come by instinct to those who have no reading at all. She dragged the handkerchief from her head, and threw it over her face. She beat her breast. She beat the very ground with her clenched45 hands. Her little boy, having gathered his belongings46 together and dusted his cotton frock, now came forward, and stood watching her with his fingers at his mouth. He took it to be a game which he did not understand; as indeed it was—the game of life.
The priest scratched his chin with his forefinger47, which was probably a habit with him when puzzled, and stood looking down out of the corner of his eyes at the ground.
It was he, however, who moved first, and, stooping, loosed the clenched fingers round the gun. It was a double-barrelled gun, at full cock, and every man in the little crowd assembled carried one like it. To this day, if one meets a man, even in the streets of Corte or Ajaccio, who carries no gun, it may be presumed that it is only because he pins greater faith on a revolver.
Neither hammer had fallen, and the abbé gave a little nod. It was, it seemed, the usual thing to make quite sure before shooting, so that there might be no unnecessary waste of powder or risk of reprisal48. The woman looked at the gun, too, and knew the meaning of the raised hammers.
She leapt to her feet, and looked round at the sullen faces.
“And some of you know who did it,” she said; “and you will help the murderer when he goes to the macquis, and take him food, and tell him when the gendarmes are hunting him.”
She waved her hand fiercely towards the mountains, which loomed49, range behind range, dark and forbidding to the south, towards Calvi and Corte. But the men only shrugged50 their shoulders; for the forest and the mountain brushwood were no longer the refuge they used to be in this the last year of the iron rule of Napoleon III, who, whether he possessed51 or not the Corsican blood that his foes52 deny him, knew, at all events, how to rule Corsica better than any man before or since.
“No, no,” said the priest, soothingly53. “Those days are gone. He will be taken, and justice will be done.”
But he spoke54 without conviction, almost as if he had no faith in this vaunted regeneration of a people whose history is a story of endless strife—as if he could see with a prophetic eye thirty years into the future, down to the present day, when the last state of that land is worse than the first.
“Justice!” cried the woman. “There is no justice in Corsica! What had Pietro done that he should lie there? Only his duty—only that for which he was paid. He was the Perucca's agent, and because he made the idlers pay their rent, they threatened him. Because he put up fences, they raised their guns to him. Because he stopped their thieving and their lawlessness, they shoot him. He drove their cattle from the fields because they were Perucca's fields, and he was paid to watch his master's interests. But Perucca they dare not touch, because his clan55 is large, and would hunt the murderer down. If he was caught, the Peruccas would make sure of the jury—ay! And of the judge at Bastia—but Pietro is not of Corsica; he has no friends and no clan, so justice is not for him.”
She knelt down again as she spoke and laid her hand on her dead husband's back, but she made no attempt to move him. For although Pietro Andrei was an Italian, his wife was Corsican—a woman of Bonifacio, that grim town on a rock so often besieged56 and never yet taken by a fair fight. She had been brought up in, as it were, an atmosphere of conventional lawlessness, and knew that it is well not to touch a dead man till the gendarmes have seen him, but to send a child or an old woman to the gendarmerie, and then to stand aloof57 and know nothing; and feign58 stupidity; so that the officials, when they arrive, may find the whole village at work in the fields or sitting in their homes, while the dead, who can tell no tales, has suddenly few friends and no enemies.
Then Andrei's widow rose slowly to her feet. Her face was composed now and set. She arranged the black silk handkerchief on her head, and set her dress in order. She was suddenly calm and quiet. “But see,” she said, looking round into eyes that failed to meet her own, “in this country each man must execute his own justice. It has always been so, and it will be so, so long as there are any Corsicans left. And if there is no man left, then the women must do it.”
She tied her apron59 tighter, as if about to undertake some hard domestic duty, and brushed the dust from her black dress.
“Come here,” she said, turning to the child, and lapsing60 into the soft dialect of the south and east—“come here, thou child of Pietro Andrei.”
The child came forward. He was probably two years old, and understood nothing that was passing.
“See here, you of Olmeta,” she said composedly; and, stooping down, she dipped her finger in the pool of blood that had collected in the dust. “See here—and here.”
As she spoke she hastily smeared61 the blood over the child's face and dragged him away from the priest, who had stepped forward.
“No, no,” he protested. “Those times are past.”
“Past!” said the woman, with a flash of fury. “All the country knows that your own mother did it to you at Sartene, where you come from.”
The abbé made no answer, but, taking the child by the arm, dragged him gently away from his mother. With his other hand he sought in his pocket for a handkerchief. But he was a lone24 man, without a housekeeper62, and the handkerchief was missing. The child looked from one to the other, laughing uncertainly, with his grimly decorated face.
Then the priest stooped, and with the skirt of his cassock wiped the child's face.
“There,” he said to the woman, “take him home, for I hear the gendarmes coming.”
Indeed, the trotting63 of horses and the clank of the long swinging sabres could be heard on the road below the village, and one by one the onlookers64 dropped away, leaving the Abbé Susini alone at the foot of the church steps.
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1
writ
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| n.命令状，书面命令 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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lure
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| n.吸引人的东西，诱惑物；vt.引诱，吸引 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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8
veer
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| vt.转向，顺时针转，改变；n.转向 | |
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lashing
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| n.鞭打；痛斥；大量；许多v.鞭打( lash的现在分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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10
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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13
foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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15
notably
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| adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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degenerate
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| v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者 | |
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21
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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24
lone
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| adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的 | |
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gendarmes
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| n.宪兵，警官( gendarme的名词复数 ) | |
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groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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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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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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32
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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impulsive
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| adj.冲动的，刺激的；有推动力的 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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38
rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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40
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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carnival
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| n.嘉年华会，狂欢，狂欢节，巡回表演 | |
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intermittent
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| adj.间歇的，断断续续的 | |
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sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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44
scriptures
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| 经文，圣典( scripture的名词复数 )； 经典 | |
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45
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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46
belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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48
reprisal
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| n.报复，报仇，报复性劫掠 | |
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49
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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50
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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51
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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52
foes
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| 敌人，仇敌( foe的名词复数 ) | |
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53
soothingly
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| adv.抚慰地，安慰地；镇痛地 | |
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54
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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55
clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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56
besieged
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| 包围，围困，围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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58
feign
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| vt.假装，佯作 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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lapsing
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| v.退步( lapse的现在分词 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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61
smeared
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| 弄脏； 玷污； 涂抹； 擦上 | |
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62
housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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63
trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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onlookers
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| n.旁观者，观看者( onlooker的名词复数 ) | |
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