Having sat buried in thought for a full five minutes after the traders of the winter posts had left him, Galen Albret thrust back his chair and walked into a room, long, low, and heavily raftered, strikingly unlike the Council Room. Its floor was overlaid with dark rugs; a piano of ancient model filled one corner; pictures and books broke the wall; the lamps and the windows were shaded, a woman's work-basket and a tea-set occupied a large table. Only a certain barbaric profusion1 of furs, the huge fireplace, and the rough rafters of the ceiling differentiated2 the place from the drawing-room of a well-to-do family anywhere.
Galen Albret sank heavily into a chair and struck a bell. A tall, slightly stooped English servant, with correct side whiskers and incompetent3, watery4 blue eyes, answered. To him said the Factor:
"I wish to see Miss Albret."
A moment later Virginia entered the room.
"Let us have some tea, O-mi-mi," requested her father.
The girl moved gently about, preparing and lighting5 the lamp, measuring the tea, her fair head bowed gracefully7 over her task, her dark eyes pensive8 and but half following what she did. Finally with a certain air of decision she seated herself on the arm of a chair.
"Father," said she.
"Yes."
"A stranger came to-day with Louis Placide of Kettle Portage."
"Well?"
"He was treated strangely by our people, and he treated them strangely in return. Why is that?"
"Who can tell?"
"What is his station? Is he a common trader? He does not look it."
"He is a man of intelligence and daring."
"Then why is he not our guest?"
Galen Albret did not answer. After a moment's pause he asked again for his tea. The girl turned away impatiently. Here was a puzzle, neither the _voyageurs_, nor Wishkobun her nurse, nor her father would explain to her. The first had grinned stupidly; the second had drawn10 her shawl across her face, the third asked for tea!
She handed her father the cup, hesitated, then ventured to inquire whether she was forbidden to greet the stranger should the occasion arise.
"He is a gentleman," replied her father.
She sipped11 her tea thoughtfully, her imagination stirring. Again her recollection lingered over the clear bronze lines of the stranger's face. Something vaguely12 familiar seemed to touch her consciousness with ghostly fingers. She closed her eyes and tried to clutch them. At once they were withdrawn13. And then again, when her attention wandered, they stole back, plucking appealingly at the hem9 of her recollections.
The room was heavy-curtained, deep embrasured, for the house, beneath its clap-boards, was of logs. Although out of doors the clear spring sunshine still flooded the valley of the Moose; within, the shadows had begun with velvet14 fingers to extinguish the brighter lights. Virginia threw herself back on a chair in the corner.
"Virginia," said Galen Albret, suddenly,
"Yes, father."
"You are no longer a child, but a woman. Would you like to go to Quebec?"
She did not answer him at once, but pondered beneath close-knit brows.
"Do you wish me to go, father?" she asked at length.
"You are eighteen. It is time you saw the world, time you learned the ways of other people. But the journey is hard. I may not see you again for some years. You go among strangers."
He fell silent again. Motionless he had been, except for the mumbling15 of his lips beneath his beard.
"It shall be just as you wish," he added a moment later.
At once a conflict arose in the girl's mind between her restless dreams and her affections. But beneath all the glitter of the question there was really nothing to take her out. Here was her father, here were the things she loved; yonder was novelty--and loneliness.
Her existence at Conjuror's House was perhaps a little complex, but it was familiar. She knew the people, and she took a daily and unwearying delight in the kindness and simplicity16 of their bearing toward herself. Each detail of life came to her in the round of habit, wearing the garment of accustomed use. But of the world she knew nothing except what she had been able to body forth17 from her reading, and that had merely given her imagination something tangible18 with which to feed her self-distrust.
"Must I decide at once?" she asked.
"If you go this year, it must be with the Abitibi _brigade_. You have until then."
"Thank you, father." said the girl, sweetly.
The shadows stole their surroundings one by one, until only the bright silver of the tea-service, and the glitter of polished wood, and the square of the open door remained. Galen Albret became an inert19 dark mass. Virginia's gray was lost in that of the twilight20.
Time passed. The clock ticked on. Faintly sounds penetrated21 from the kitchen, and still more faintly from out of doors. Then the rectangle of the door-way was darkened by a man peering uncertainly. The man wore his hat, from which slanted22 a slender heron's plume23; his shoulders were square; his thighs24 slim and graceful6.
Against the light, one caught the outline of the sash's tassel25 and the fringe of his leggings.
"Are you there, Galen Albret?" he challenged.
The spell of twilight mystery broke. It seemed as if suddenly the air had become surcharged with the vitality26 of opposition27.
"What then?" countered the Factor's heavy, deliberate tones.
"True, I see you now," rejoined the visitor carelessly, as he flung himself across the arm of a chair and swung one foot. "I do not doubt you are convinced by this time of my intention."
"My recollection does not tell me what messenger I sent to ask this interview."
"Correct," laughed the young man a little hardly. "You _didn't_ ask it. I attended to that myself. What you want doesn't concern me in the least. What do you suppose I care what, or what not, any of this crew wants? I'm master of my own ideas, anyway, thank God. If you don't like what I do, you can always stop me." In the tone of his voice was a distinct challenge. Galen Albret, it seemed, chose to pass it by.
"True," he replied sombrely, after a barely perceptible pause to mark his tacit displeasure. "It is your hour. Say on."
"I should like to know the date at which I take _la Longue Traverse_."
"You persist in that nonsense?"
"Call my departure whatever you want to--I have the name for it. When do I leave?"
"And in the meantime?"
"Do as you please."
"Ah, thanks for this generosity," cried the young man, in a tone of declamatory sarcasm29 so artificial as fairly to scent30 the elocutionary. "To do as I please--here--now there's a blessed privilege! I may walk around where I want to, talk to such as have a good word for me, punish those who have not! But do I err31 in concluding that the state of your game law is such that it would be useless to reclaim32 my rifle from the engaging Placide?"
"You have a fine instinct," approved the Factor.
"It is one of my valued possessions," rejoined the young man, insolently33. He struck a match, and by its light selected a cigarette.
"I do not myself use tobacco in this room," suggested the older speaker.
"I am curious to learn the limits of your forbearance," replied the younger, proceeding34 to smoke.
He threw back his head and regarded his opponent with an open challenge, daring him to become angry. The match went out.
Virginia, who had listened in growing anger and astonishment35, unable longer to refrain from defending the dignity of her usually autocratic father, although he seemed little disposed to defend himself, now intervened from her dark corner on the divan36.
"Is the journey then so long, sir," she asked composedly, "that it at once inspires such anticipations--and such bitterness?"
In an instant the man was on his feet, hat in hand, and the cigarette had described a fiery37 curve into the empty hearth38.
"I beg your pardon, sincerely," he cried, "I did not know you were here!"
"You might better apologize to my father," replied Virginia.
The young man stepped forward and without asking permission, lighted one of the tall lamps.
"The lady of the guns!" he marvelled39 softly to himself.
He moved across the room, looking down on her inscrutably, while she looked up at him in composed expectation of an apology--and Galen Albret sat motionless, in the shadow of his great arm-chair. But after a moment her calm attention broke down. Something there was about this man that stirred her emotions--whether of curiosity, pity, indignation, or a slight defensive40 fear she was not introspective enough to care to inquire. And yet the sensation was not altogether unpleasant, and, as at the guns that afternoon, a certain portion of her consciousness remained in sympathy with whatever it was of mysterious attraction he represented to her. In him she felt the dominant41, as a wild creature of the woods instinctively42 senses the master and drops its eyes. Resentment43 did not leave her, but over it spread a film of confusion that robbed it of its potency44. In him, in his mood, in his words, in his manner, was something that called out in direct appeal the more primitive45 instincts hitherto dormant46 beneath her sense of maidenhood47, so that even at this vexed48 moment of conscious opposition, her heart was ranging itself on his side. Overpoweringly the feeling swept her that she was not acting49 in accordance with her sense of fitness. She knew she should strike, but was unable to give due force to the blow. In the confusion of such a discovery, her eyelids50 fluttered and fell. And he saw, and, understanding his power, dropped swiftly beside her on the broad divan.
"You must pardon me, mademoiselle," he begun, his voice sinking to a depth of rich music singularly caressing51. "To you I may seem to have small excuses, but when a man is vouchsafed52 a glimpse of heaven only to be cast out the next instant into hell, he is not always particular in the choice of words."
All the time his eyes sought hers, which avoided the challenge, and the strong masculine charm of magnetism53 which he possessed54 in such vital abundance overwhelmed her unaccustomed consciousness. Galen Albret shifted uneasily, and shot a glance in their direction. The stranger, perceiving this, lowered his voice in register and tone, and went on with almost exaggerated earnestness.
"Surely you can forgive me, a desperate man, almost anything?"
"I do not understand," said Virginia, with a palpable effort.
Ned Trent leaned forward until his eager face was almost at her shoulder.
"Perhaps not," he urged; "I cannot ask you to try. But suppose, mademoiselle, you were in my case. Suppose your eyes--like mine--have rested on nothing but a howling wilderness55 for dear heaven knows how long; you come at last in sight of real houses, real grass, real door-yard gardens just ready to blossom in the spring, real food, real beds, real books, real men with whom to exchange the sensible word, and something more, mademoiselle--a woman such as one dreams of in the long forest nights under the stars. And you know that while others, the lucky ones, may stay to enjoy it all, you, the unfortunate, are condemned56 to leave it at any moment for _la Longue Traverse_. Would not you, too, be bitter, mademoiselle? Would not you too mock and sneer57? Think, mademoiselle, I have not even the little satisfaction of rousing men's anger. I can insult them as I will, but they turn aside in pity, saying one to another: 'Let us pleasure him in this, poor fellow, for he is about to take _la Longue Traverse_.' That is why your father accepts calmly from me what he would not from another."
Virginia sat bolt upright on the divan, her hands clasped in her lap, her wonderful black eyes looking straight out before her, trying to avoid her companion's insistent58 gaze. His attention was fixed59 on her mobile and changing countenance60, but he marked with evident satisfaction Galen Albret's growing uneasiness. This was evidenced only by a shifting of the feet, a tapping of the fingers, a turning of the shaggy head--in such a man slight tokens are significant. The silence deepened with the shadows drawing about the single lamp, while Virginia attempted to maintain a breathing advantage above the flood of strange emotions which the personality of this man had swept down upon her.
"It does not seem--" objected the girl in bewilderment, "I do not know--men are often out in this country for years at a time. Long journeys are not unknown among us, We are used to undertaking61 them."
"But not _la Longue Traverse_," insisted the young man, sombrely.
"_La Longue Traverse_." she repeated in sweet perplexity.
"Sometimes called the Journey of Death," he explained.
She turned to look him in the eyes, a vague expression of puzzled fear on her face.
"She has never heard of it," said Ned Trent to himself, and aloud: "Men who undertake it leave comfort behind. They embrace hunger and weariness, cold and disease. At the last they embrace death, and are glad of his coming."
Something in his tone compelled belief; something in his face told her that he was a man by whom the inevitable62 hardships of winter and summer travel, fearful as they are, would be lightly endured. She shuddered63.
"This dreadful thing is necessary?" she asked.
"I do not understand----"
"In the North few of us understand," agreed the young man with a hint of bitterness seeping65 through his voice. "The mighty66 order, and so we obey. But that is beside the point. I have not told you these things to harrow you; I have tried to excuse myself for my actions. Does it touch you a little? Am I forgiven?"
"I do not understand how such things can be," she objected in some confusion, "why such journeys must exist. My mind cannot comprehend your explanations."
The stranger leaned forward abruptly67, his eyes blazing with the magnetic personality of the man.
"But your heart?" he breathed.
It was the moment. "My heart--" she repeated, as though bewildered by the intensity68 of his eyes, "my heart--ah--yes!"
Immediately the blood rushed over her face and throat in a torrent69. She snatched her eyes away, and cowered70 back in the corner, going red and white by turns, now angry, now frightened, now bewildered, until his gaze, half masterful, half pleading, again conquered hers. Galen Albret had ceased tapping his chair. In the dim light he sat, staring straight before him, massive, inert, grim.
"I believe you--" she murmured hurriedly at last. "I pity you!"
She rose. Quick as light he barred her passage.
"Don't! don't!" she pleaded. "I must go--you have shaken me--I--I do not understand myself----"
"I must see you again," he whispered eagerly. "To-night--by the guns."
"No, no!"
"To-night," he insisted.
She raised her eyes to his, this time naked of defence, so that the man saw down through their depths into her very soul.
"Oh," she begged, quivering, "let me pass. Don't you see--I'm going to cry!"
收听单词发音 |
1
profusion
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| n.挥霍；丰富 | |
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differentiated
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| 区分，区别，辨别( differentiate的过去式和过去分词 )； 区别对待； 表明…间的差别，构成…间差别的特征 | |
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incompetent
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| adj.无能力的，不能胜任的 | |
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watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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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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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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pensive
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| a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的 | |
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hem
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| n.贴边，镶边；vt.缝贴边；(in)包围，限制 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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sipped
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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mumbling
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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inert
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| adj.无活动能力的，惰性的；迟钝的 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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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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slanted
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| 有偏见的； 倾斜的 | |
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plume
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| n.羽毛；v.整理羽毛，骚首弄姿，用羽毛装饰 | |
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thighs
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| n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿 | |
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tassel
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| n.流苏，穗；v.抽穗， （玉米）长穗须 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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err
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| vi.犯错误，出差错 | |
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reclaim
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| v.要求归还，收回；开垦 | |
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insolently
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| adv.自豪地，自傲地 | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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divan
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| n.长沙发；（波斯或其他东方诗人的）诗集 | |
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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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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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marvelled
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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potency
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| n. 效力，潜能 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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dormant
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| adj.暂停活动的；休眠的；潜伏的 | |
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maidenhood
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| n. 处女性, 处女时代 | |
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vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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51
caressing
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| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
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52
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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magnetism
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| n.磁性，吸引力，磁学 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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57
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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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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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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63
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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65
seeping
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| v.（液体）渗( seep的现在分词 )；渗透；渗出；漏出 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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69
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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cowered
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的过去式 ) | |
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