sentiment d'une femme.”
It would seem that Lory de Vasselot had played the part of a stormy petrel when he visited Paris, for that calm Frenchman, the Baron1 de Mélide, packed his wife off to Provence the same night, and the letter that Lory wrote to the Abbé Susini, reaching Olmeta three days later, aroused its recipient2 from a contemplative perusal3 of the Petit Bastiais as if it had been a bomb-shell.
The abbé threw aside his newspaper and cigarette. He was essentially4 a man of action. He had been on his feet all day, hurrying hither and thither5 over his widespread parish, interfering6 in this man's business and that woman's quarrels with that hastiness which usually characterizes the doings of such as pride themselves upon their capability7 for action and contempt for mere8 passive thought. It was now evening, and a blessed cool air was stealing down from the mountains. Successive days of unbroken sunshine had burnt all the western side of the island, had almost dried up the Aliso, which crept, a mere rivulet9 in its stormy bed, towards St. Florent and the sea.
Susini went to-the window of his little room and opened the wooden shutters10. His house is next to the church at Olmeta and faces north-west; so that in the summer the evening sun glares across the valley into its windows. He was no great scholar, and had but a poor record in the archives of the college at Corte. Lory de Vasselot had written in a hurry, and the letter was a long one. Susini read it once, and was turning it to read again, when, glancing out of the window, he saw Denise cross the Place, and go into the church.
“Ah!” he said aloud, “that will save me a long walk.”
Then he read the letter again, with curt11 nods of the head from time to time, as if Lory were making points or giving minute instructions. He folded the letter, placed it in the pocket of his cassock, and gave himself a smart tap on the chest, as if to indicate that this was the moment and himself the man. He was brisk and full of self-confidence, managing, interfering, commanding, as all true Corsicans are. He took his hat, hardly paused to blow the dust off it, and hurried out into the sunlit Place. He went rather slowly up the church steps, however, for he was afraid of Denise. Her youth, and something spring-like and mystic in her being, disturbed him, made him uneasy and shy; which was perhaps his reason for drawing aside the heavy leather curtain and going into the church, instead of waiting for her outside. He preferred to meet her on his own ground—in the chill air, heavy with the odour of stale incense12, and in the dim light of that place where he laid down, in blunt language, his own dim reading of God's law.
He stood just within the curtain, looking at Denise, who was praying on one of the low chairs a few yards away from him; and he was betrayed into a characteristic impatience13 when she remained longer on her knees than he (as a man) deemed necessary at that moment. He showed his impatience by shuffling14 with his feet, and still Denise took no notice.
The abbé, by chance or instinct, slipped his hand within his cassock, and drew out the letter which he had just received. The rustle15 of the thin paper brought Denise to her feet in a moment, facing him.
“The French mail has arrived,” said the priest.
“Yes,” replied Denise, quickly, looking down at his hands.
They were alone in the church which, as a matter of fact, was never very well attended; and the abbé, who had not that respect for God or man which finds expression in a lowered voice, spoke16 in his natural tones.
“And I have news which affects you, mademoiselle.”
“I suppose that any news of France must do that,” replied Denise, with some spirit.
“Of course—of course,” said the abbé, rubbing his chin with his forefinger17, and making a rasping sound on that shaven surface.
He reflected in silence for a moment, and Denise made, in her turn, a hasty movement of impatience. She had only met the abbé once or twice; and all that she knew of him was the fact that he had an imperious way with him which aroused a spirit of opposition18 in herself.
“Well, Monsieur l'Abbé,” she said, “what is it?”
“It is that Mademoiselle Brun and yourself will have but two hours to prepare for your departure from the Casa Perucca,” he answered. And he drew out a large silver watch, which he consulted with the quiet air of a commander.
Denise glanced at him with some surprise, and then smiled.
“By whose orders, Monsieur l'Abbe?” she inquired with a dangerous gentleness.
Then the priest realized that she meant fight, and all his combativeness19 leapt, as it were, to meet hers. His eyes flashed in the gloom of the twilit church.
“I, mademoiselle,” he said, with that humility20 which is nought21 but an aggravated22 form of pride. He tapped himself on the chest with such emphasis that a cloud of dust flew out of his cassock, and he blew defiance23 at her through it. “I—who speak, take the liberty of making this suggestion. I, the Abbé Susini—and your humble24 servant.”
Which was not true: for he was no man's servant, and only offered to heaven a half-defiant allegiance. Denise wanted to know the contents of the letter he held crushed within his fingers; so she restrained an impulse to answer him hastily, and merely laughed. The priest thought that he had gained his point.
“I can give you two hours,” he said, “in which to make your preparations. At seven o'clock I shall arrive at the Casa Perucca with a carriage, in which to conduct Mademoiselle Brun and yourself to St. Florent, where a yacht is awaiting you.”
Denise bit her lip impatiently, and watched the thin brown fingers that were clenched25 round the letter.
“Then what is your news from France?” she asked. “From whence is your letter—from the front?”
“It is from Paris,” answered the abbé, unfolding the paper carelessly; and Denise would not have been human had she resisted the temptation to try and decipher it.
“And—?”
“And,” continued the abbé, shrugging his shoulders, “I have nothing to add, mademoiselle. You must quit Perucca before the morning. The news is bad, I tell you frankly26. The empire is tottering27 to its fall, and the news that I have in secret will be known all over Corsica to-morrow. Who knows? the island may flare28 up like a heap of bracken, and no one bearing a French name, or known to have French sympathies, will be safe. You know how you yourself are regarded in Olmeta. It is foolhardy to venture here this evening.”
Denise shrugged29 her shoulders. She had plenty of spirit, and, at all events, that courage which refuses to admit the existence of danger. Perhaps she was not thinking of danger, or of herself, at all.
“Then the Count Lory de Vasselot has ordered us out of Corsica?” she asked.
“Mademoiselle, we are wasting time,” answered the priest, folding the letter and replacing it in his pocket. “A yacht is awaiting you off St. Florent. All is organized—”
“By the Count Lory de Vasselot?”
The abbé stamped his foot impatiently.
“Bon Dieu, mademoiselle!” he cried, “you will make me lose my temper. The yacht, I tell you, is at the entrance of the bay, and by to-morrow morning it will be halfway30 to France. You cannot stay here. You must make your choice between returning to France and going into the Watrin barracks at Bastia. Colonel Gilbert will, I fancy, know how to make you obey him. And all Corsica is in the hands of Colonel Gilbert—though no one but Colonel Gilbert knows that.”
He spoke rapidly, thrusting forward his dark, eager face, forgetting all his shyness, glaring defiance into her quiet eyes.
“There, mademoiselle—and now your answer?”
“Would it not be well if the Count Lory de Vasselot attended to his own affairs at the Chateau31 de Vasselot, and the interests he has there?” replied Denise, turning away from his persistent32 eyes.
And the abbé's face dropped as if she had shot him.
“Good!” he said, after a moment's hesitation33. “I wash my hands of you. You refuse to go?”
“Yes,” answered Denise, going towards the door with a high head, and, it is possible, an aching heart. For the two often go together.
And the abbé, a man little given to the concealment34 of his feelings, shook his fist at the leather curtain as it fell into place behind her.
“Ah—these women!” he said aloud. “A secret that is thirty years old!”
Denise hurried down the steps and away from the village. She knew that the postman, having passed through Olmeta, must now be on the high-road on his way to Perucca, and she felt sure that he must have in his bag the letter of which she had followed, in imagination, the progress during the last three days.
“Now it is in the train from Paris to Marseilles; now it is on board the Persévérance, steaming across the Gulf35 of Lyons,” had been her thought night and morning. “Now it is at Bastia,” she had imagined on waking at dawn that day. And at length she had it now, in thought, close to her on the Olmeta road in front of her.
At a turn of the road she caught sight of the postman, trudging36 along beneath the heavy chestnut37 trees. Then at length she overtook him, and he stopped to open the bag slung38 across his shoulder. He was a silent man, who saluted39 her awkwardly, and handed her several letters and a newspaper. With another salutation he walked on, leaving Denise standing40 by the low wall of the road alone. There was only one letter for her. She turned it over and examined the seal: a bare sword with a gay French motto beneath it—the device of the Vasselots.
She opened the envelope after a long pause. It contained nothing but her own travel-stained letter, of which the seal had not been broken. And, as she thoughtfully examined both envelopes, there glistened41 in her eyes that light which it is vouchsafed42 to a few men to see, and which is the nearest approach to the light of heaven that ever illumines this poor earth. For love has, among others, this peculiarity43: that it may live in the same heart with a great anger, and seems to gain only strength from the proximity44.
Denise replaced the two letters in her pocket and walked on. A carriage passed her, and she received a curt bow and salutation from the Abbé Susini who was in it. The carriage turned to the right at the crossroads, and rattled45 down the hill in the direction of Vasselot. Denise's head went an inch higher at the sight of it.
“I met the Abbé Susini at Olmeta,” she said to Mademoiselle Brun, a few minutes later in the great bare drawing-room of the Casa Perucca. “And he transmitted the Count de Vasselot's command that we should leave the Casa Perucca to-night for France. I suggested that the order should be given to the Chateau de Vasselot instead of the Casa Perucca, and the abbé took me at my word. He has gone to the Chateau de Vasselot now in a carriage.”
Mademoiselle Brun, who was busy with her work near the window, laid aside her needle and looked at Denise. She had a faculty46 of instantly going, as it were, to the essential part of a question and tearing the heart out of it: which faculty is, with all respect, more a masculine than a feminine quality. She ignored the side-issues and pounced47, as it were, upon the central thread—the reason that Lory de Vasselot had had for sending such an order. She rose and tore open the newspaper, glanced at the war-news, and laid it aside. Then she opened a letter addressed to herself. It was on superlatively thick paper and bore a coronet in one corner.
“My Dear” (it ran),
“This much I have learnt from two men who will tell me nothing—France is lost. The Holy Virgin48 help us!
“Jane De Mélide.”
Mademoiselle Brun turned away to the window, and stood there with her back to Denise for some moments. At length she came back, and the girl saw something in the grey and wizened50 face which stirred her heart, she knew not why; for all great thoughts and high qualities have power to illumine the humblest countenance51.
“You may stay here if you like,” said Mademoiselle Brun, “but I am going back to France to-night.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yes,” said Denise, when she had read the note. “But I do not understand.”
“No. Because you never knew your father—the bravest man God ever created. But some other man will teach you some day.”
“Teach me what?” asked Denise, looking with wonder at the little woman. “Of what are you thinking?”
“Of that of which Lory de Vasselot, and Henri de Mélide, and Jane, and all good Frenchmen and Frenchwomen are thinking at this moment—of France, and only France,” said Mademoiselle Brun; and out of her mouse-like eyes there shone, at that moment, the soul of a man—and of a brave man.
Her lips quivered for a moment, before she shut them with a snap. Perhaps Denise wanted to be persuaded to return to France. Perhaps the blood that ran in her veins53 was stirred by the spirit of Mademoiselle Brun, whose arguments were short and sharp, as became a woman much given to economy in words. At all events, the girl listened in silence while mademoiselle explained that even two women might, in some minute degree, help France at this moment. For patriotism54, like courage, is infectious; and it is a poor heart that hurries to abandon a sinking ship.
It thus came about that, soon after sunset, Mademoiselle Brun and Denise hurried down to the cross-roads to intercept55 the carriage, of which they could perceive the lights slowly approaching across the dark valley of Vasselot.
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1
baron
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| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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recipient
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| a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器 | |
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3
perusal
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| n.细读，熟读；目测 | |
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4
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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6
interfering
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| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
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7
capability
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| n.能力；才能；(pl)可发展的能力或特性等 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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rivulet
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| n.小溪，小河 | |
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shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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curt
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| adj.简短的，草率的 | |
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incense
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| v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气 | |
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13
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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14
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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15
rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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16
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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17
forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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combativeness
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| n.好战 | |
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humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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nought
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| n.／adj.无，零 | |
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aggravated
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| 使恶化( aggravate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使更严重； 激怒； 使恼火 | |
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defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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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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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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tottering
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| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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28
flare
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| v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发 | |
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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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halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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chateau
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| n.城堡，别墅 | |
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32
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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concealment
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| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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36
trudging
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的现在分词形式） | |
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chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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slung
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| 抛( sling的过去式和过去分词 )； 吊挂； 遣送； 押往 | |
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saluted
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| v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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40
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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41
glistened
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| v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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42
vouchsafed
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| v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 )；允诺 | |
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43
peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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44
proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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45
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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46
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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47
pounced
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| v.突然袭击( pounce的过去式和过去分词 )；猛扑；一眼看出；抓住机会（进行抨击） | |
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48
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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49
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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50
wizened
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| adj.凋谢的；枯槁的 | |
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51
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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52
baroness
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| n.男爵夫人，女男爵 | |
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53
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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54
patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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intercept
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| vt.拦截，截住，截击 | |
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