The assertion, laughingly flung out six months earlier in a bright June garden, came back to Mary Boyne with a sharp perception of its latent significance as she stood, in the December dusk, waiting for the lamps to be brought into the library.
The words had been spoken by their friend Alida Stair, as they sat at tea on her lawn at Pangbourne, in reference to the very house of which the library in question was the central, the pivotal “feature.” Mary Boyne and her husband, in quest of a country place in one of the southern or southwestern counties, had, on their arrival in England, carried their problem straight to Alida Stair, who had successfully solved it in her own case; but it was not until they had rejected, almost capriciously, several practical and judicious2 suggestions that she threw it out: “Well, there’s Lyng, in Dorsetshire. It belongs to Hugo’s cousins, and you can get it for a song.”
The reasons she gave for its being obtainable on these terms — its remoteness from a station, its lack of electric light, hot-water pipes, and other vulgar necessities — were exactly those pleading in its favor with two romantic Americans perversely3 in search of the economic drawbacks which were associated, in their tradition, with unusual architectural felicities.
“I should never believe I was living in an old house unless I was thoroughly4 uncomfortable,” Ned Boyne, the more extravagant5 of the two, had jocosely6 insisted; “the least hint of ‘convenience’ would make me think it had been bought out of an exhibition, with the pieces numbered, and set up again.” And they had proceeded to enumerate7, with humorous precision, their various suspicions and exactions, refusing to believe that the house their cousin recommended was really Tudor till they learned it had no heating system, or that the village church was literally8 in the grounds till she assured them of the deplorable uncertainty9 of the water-supply.
“It’s too uncomfortable to be true!” Edward Boyne had continued to exult10 as the avowal11 of each disadvantage was successively wrung12 from her; but he had cut short his rhapsody to ask, with a sudden relapse to distrust: “And the ghost? You’ve been concealing13 from us the fact that there is no ghost!”
Mary, at the moment, had laughed with him, yet almost with her laugh, being possessed14 of several sets of independent perceptions, had noted15 a sudden flatness of tone in Alida’s answering hilarity16.
“Oh, Dorsetshire’s full of ghosts, you know.”
“Yes, yes; but that won’t do. I don’t want to have to drive ten miles to see somebody else’s ghost. I want one of my own on the premises17. Is there a ghost at Lyng?”
His rejoinder had made Alida laugh again, and it was then that she had flung back tantalizingly18: “Oh, there is one, of course, but you’ll never know it.”
“Never know it?” Boyne pulled her up. “But what in the world constitutes a ghost except the fact of its being known for one?”
“I can’t say. But that’s the story.”
“That there’s a ghost, but that nobody knows it’s a ghost?”
“Well — not till afterward19, at any rate.”
“Till afterward?”
“Not till long, long afterward.”
“But if it’s once been identified as an unearthly visitant, why hasn’t its signalement been handed down in the family? How has it managed to preserve its incognito20?”
Alida could only shake her head. “Don’t ask me. But it has.”
“And then suddenly — ” Mary spoke1 up as if from some cavernous depth of divination21 — “suddenly, long afterward, one says to one’s self, ’That was it?’”
She was oddly startled at the sepulchral22 sound with which her question fell on the banter23 of the other two, and she saw the shadow of the same surprise flit across Alida’s clear pupils. “I suppose so. One just has to wait.”
“Oh, hang waiting!” Ned broke in. “Life’s too short for a ghost who can only be enjoyed in retrospect24. Can’t we do better than that, Mary?”
But it turned out that in the event they were not destined25 to, for within three months of their conversation with Mrs. Stair they were established at Lyng, and the life they had yearned26 for to the point of planning it out in all its daily details had actually begun for them.
It was to sit, in the thick December dusk, by just such a wide-hooded27 fireplace, under just such black oak rafters, with the sense that beyond the mullioned panes28 the downs were darkening to a deeper solitude29: it was for the ultimate indulgence in such sensations that Mary Boyne had endured for nearly fourteen years the soul-deadening ugliness of the Middle West, and that Boyne had ground on doggedly30 at his engineering till, with a suddenness that still made her blink, the prodigious31 windfall of the Blue Star Mine had put them at a stroke in possession of life and the leisure to taste it. They had never for a moment meant their new state to be one of idleness; but they meant to give themselves only to harmonious32 activities. She had her vision of painting and gardening (against a background of gray walls), he dreamed of the production of his long-planned book on the “Economic Basis of Culture”; and with such absorbing work ahead no existence could be too sequestered33; they could not get far enough from the world, or plunge34 deep enough into the past.
Dorsetshire had attracted them from the first by a semblance35 of remoteness out of all proportion to its geographical36 position. But to the Boynes it was one of the ever-recurring wonders of the whole incredibly compressed island — a nest of counties, as they put it — that for the production of its effects so little of a given quality went so far: that so few miles made a distance, and so short a distance a difference.
“It’s that,” Ned had once enthusiastically explained, “that gives such depth to their effects, such relief to their least contrasts. They’ve been able to lay the butter so thick on every exquisite37 mouthful.”
The butter had certainly been laid on thick at Lyng: the old gray house, hidden under a shoulder of the downs, had almost all the finer marks of commerce with a protracted38 past. The mere39 fact that it was neither large nor exceptional made it, to the Boynes, abound40 the more richly in its special sense — the sense of having been for centuries a deep, dim reservoir of life. The life had probably not been of the most vivid order: for long periods, no doubt, it had fallen as noiselessly into the past as the quiet drizzle41 of autumn fell, hour after hour, into the green fish-pond between the yews43; but these back-waters of existence sometimes breed, in their sluggish44 depths, strange acuities of emotion, and Mary Boyne had felt from the first the occasional brush of an intenser memory.
The feeling had never been stronger than on the December afternoon when, waiting in the library for the belated lamps, she rose from her seat and stood among the shadows of the hearth45. Her husband had gone off, after luncheon46, for one of his long tramps on the downs. She had noticed of late that he preferred to be unaccompanied on these occasions; and, in the tried security of their personal relations, had been driven to conclude that his book was bothering him, and that he needed the afternoons to turn over in solitude the problems left from the morning’s work. Certainly the book was not going as smoothly47 as she had imagined it would, and the lines of perplexity between his eyes had never been there in his engineering days. Then he had often looked fagged to the verge48 of illness, but the native demon49 of “worry” had never branded his brow. Yet the few pages he had so far read to her — the introduction, and a synopsis50 of the opening chapter — gave evidences of a firm possession of his subject, and a deepening confidence in his powers.
The fact threw her into deeper perplexity, since, now that he had done with “business” and its disturbing contingencies51, the one other possible element of anxiety was eliminated. Unless it were his health, then? But physically52 he had gained since they had come to Dorsetshire, grown robuster, ruddier, and fresher-eyed. It was only within a week that she had felt in him the undefinable change that made her restless in his absence, and as tongue-tied in his presence as though it were she who had a secret to keep from him!
The thought that there was a secret somewhere between them struck her with a sudden smart rap of wonder, and she looked about her down the dim, long room.
“Can it be the house?” she mused53.
The room itself might have been full of secrets. They seemed to be piling themselves up, as evening fell, like the layers and layers of velvet54 shadow dropping from the low ceiling, the dusky walls of books, the smoke-blurred55 sculpture of the hooded hearth.
“Why, of course — the house is haunted!” she reflected.
The ghost — Alida’s imperceptible ghost — after figuring largely in the banter of their first month or two at Lyng, had been gradually discarded as too ineffectual for imaginative use. Mary had, indeed, as became the tenant56 of a haunted house, made the customary inquiries57 among her few rural neighbors, but, beyond a vague, “They du say so, Ma’am,” the villagers had nothing to impart. The elusive58 specter had apparently59 never had sufficient identity for a legend to crystallize about it, and after a time the Boynes had laughingly set the matter down to their profit-and-loss account, agreeing that Lyng was one of the few houses good enough in itself to dispense60 with supernatural enhancements.
“And I suppose, poor, ineffectual demon, that’s why it beats its beautiful wings in vain in the void,” Mary had laughingly concluded.
“Or, rather,” Ned answered, in the same strain, “why, amid so much that’s ghostly, it can never affirm its separate existence as the ghost.” And thereupon their invisible housemate had finally dropped out of their references, which were numerous enough to make them promptly61 unaware62 of the loss.
Now, as she stood on the hearth, the subject of their earlier curiosity revived in her with a new sense of its meaning — a sense gradually acquired through close daily contact with the scene of the lurking63 mystery. It was the house itself, of course, that possessed the ghost-seeing faculty64, that communed visually but secretly with its own past; and if one could only get into close enough communion with the house, one might surprise its secret, and acquire the ghost-sight on one’s own account. Perhaps, in his long solitary65 hours in this very room, where she never trespassed66 till the afternoon, her husband had acquired it already, and was silently carrying the dread67 weight of whatever it had revealed to him. Mary was too well-versed in the code of the spectral68 world not to know that one could not talk about the ghosts one saw: to do so was almost as great a breach69 of good-breeding as to name a lady in a club. But this explanation did not really satisfy her. “What, after all, except for the fun of the frisson,” she reflected, “would he really care for any of their old ghosts?” And thence she was thrown back once more on the fundamental dilemma70: the fact that one’s greater or less susceptibility to spectral influences had no particular bearing on the case, since, when one did see a ghost at Lyng, one did not know it.
“Not till long afterward,” Alida Stair had said. Well, supposing Ned had seen one when they first came, and had known only within the last week what had happened to him? More and more under the spell of the hour, she threw back her searching thoughts to the early days of their tenancy, but at first only to recall a gay confusion of unpacking71, settling, arranging of books, and calling to each other from remote corners of the house as treasure after treasure of their habitation revealed itself to them. It was in this particular connection that she presently recalled a certain soft afternoon of the previous October, when, passing from the first rapturous flurry of exploration to a detailed72 inspection73 of the old house, she had pressed (like a novel heroine) a panel that opened at her touch, on a narrow flight of stairs leading to an unsuspected flat ledge74 of the roof — the roof which, from below, seemed to slope away on all sides too abruptly75 for any but practised feet to scale.
The view from this hidden coign was enchanting76, and she had flown down to snatch Ned from his papers and give him the freedom of her discovery. She remembered still how, standing77 on the narrow ledge, he had passed his arm about her while their gaze flew to the long, tossed horizon-line of the downs, and then dropped contentedly78 back to trace the arabesque79 of yew42 hedges about the fish-pond, and the shadow of the cedar80 on the lawn.
“And now the other way,” he had said, gently turning her about within his arm; and closely pressed to him, she had absorbed, like some long, satisfying draft, the picture of the gray-walled court, the squat81 lions on the gates, and the lime-avenue reaching up to the highroad under the downs.
It was just then, while they gazed and held each other, that she had felt his arm relax, and heard a sharp “Hullo!” that made her turn to glance at him.
Distinctly, yes, she now recalled she had seen, as she glanced, a shadow of anxiety, of perplexity, rather, fall across his face; and, following his eyes, had beheld82 the figure of a man — a man in loose, grayish clothes, as it appeared to her — who was sauntering down the lime-avenue to the court with the tentative gait of a stranger seeking his way. Her short-sighted eyes had given her but a blurred impression of slightness and grayness, with something foreign, or at least unlocal, in the cut of the figure or its garb83; but her husband had apparently seen more — seen enough to make him push past her with a sharp “Wait!” and dash down the twisting stairs without pausing to give her a hand for the descent.
A slight tendency to dizziness obliged her, after a provisional clutch at the chimney against which they had been leaning, to follow him down more cautiously; and when she had reached the attic84 landing she paused again for a less definite reason, leaning over the oak banister to strain her eyes through the silence of the brown, sun-flecked depths below. She lingered there till, somewhere in those depths, she heard the closing of a door; then, mechanically impelled85, she went down the shallow flights of steps till she reached the lower hall.
The front door stood open on the mild sunlight of the court, and hall and court were empty. The library door was open, too, and after listening in vain for any sound of voices within, she quickly crossed the threshold, and found her husband alone, vaguely86 fingering the papers on his desk.
He looked up, as if surprised at her precipitate87 entrance, but the shadow of anxiety had passed from his face, leaving it even, as she fancied, a little brighter and clearer than usual.
“What was it? Who was it?” she asked.
“Who?” he repeated, with the surprise still all on his side.
“The man we saw coming toward the house.” Boyne shrugged88 his shoulders. “So I thought; but he must have got up steam in the interval89. What do you say to our trying a scramble90 up Meldon Steep before sunset?”
That was all. At the time the occurrence had been less than nothing, had, indeed, been immediately obliterated91 by the magic of their first vision from Meldon Steep, a height which they had dreamed of climbing ever since they had first seen its bare spine92 heaving itself above the low roof of Lyng. Doubtless it was the mere fact of the other incident’s having occurred on the very day of their ascent93 to Meldon that had kept it stored away in the unconscious fold of association from which it now emerged; for in itself it had no mark of the portentous94. At the moment there could have been nothing more natural than that Ned should dash himself from the roof in the pursuit of dilatory95 tradesmen. It was the period when they were always on the watch for one or the other of the specialists employed about the place; always lying in wait for them, and dashing out at them with questions, reproaches, or reminders96. And certainly in the distance the gray figure had looked like Peters.
Yet now, as she reviewed the rapid scene, she felt her husband’s explanation of it to have been invalidated by the look of anxiety on his face. Why had the familiar appearance of Peters made him anxious? Why, above all, if it was of such prime necessity to confer with that authority on the subject of the stable-drains, had the failure to find him produced such a look of relief? Mary could not say that any one of these considerations had occurred to her at the time, yet, from the promptness with which they now marshaled themselves at her summons, she had a sudden sense that they must all along have been there, waiting their hour.
点击收听单词发音
1 spoke | |
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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2 judicious | |
adj.明智的,明断的,能作出明智决定的 | |
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3 perversely | |
adv. 倔强地 | |
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4 thoroughly | |
adv.完全地,彻底地,十足地 | |
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5 extravagant | |
adj.奢侈的;过分的;(言行等)放肆的 | |
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6 jocosely | |
adv.说玩笑地,诙谐地 | |
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7 enumerate | |
v.列举,计算,枚举,数 | |
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8 literally | |
adv.照字面意义,逐字地;确实 | |
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9 uncertainty | |
n.易变,靠不住,不确知,不确定的事物 | |
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10 exult | |
v.狂喜,欢腾;欢欣鼓舞 | |
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11 avowal | |
n.公开宣称,坦白承认 | |
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12 wrung | |
绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 ); 握紧(尤指别人的手); 把(湿衣服)拧干; 绞掉(水) | |
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13 concealing | |
v.隐藏,隐瞒,遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
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14 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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15 noted | |
adj.著名的,知名的 | |
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16 hilarity | |
n.欢乐;热闹 | |
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17 premises | |
n.建筑物,房屋 | |
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18 tantalizingly | |
adv.…得令人着急,…到令人着急的程度 | |
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19 afterward | |
adv.后来;以后 | |
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20 incognito | |
adv.匿名地;n.隐姓埋名;adj.化装的,用假名的,隐匿姓名身份的 | |
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21 divination | |
n.占卜,预测 | |
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22 sepulchral | |
adj.坟墓的,阴深的 | |
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23 banter | |
n.嘲弄,戏谑;v.取笑,逗弄,开玩笑 | |
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24 retrospect | |
n.回顾,追溯;v.回顾,回想,追溯 | |
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25 destined | |
adj.命中注定的;(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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26 yearned | |
渴望,切盼,向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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27 hooded | |
adj.戴头巾的;有罩盖的;颈部因肋骨运动而膨胀的 | |
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28 panes | |
窗玻璃( pane的名词复数 ) | |
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29 solitude | |
n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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30 doggedly | |
adv.顽强地,固执地 | |
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31 prodigious | |
adj.惊人的,奇妙的;异常的;巨大的;庞大的 | |
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32 harmonious | |
adj.和睦的,调和的,和谐的,协调的 | |
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33 sequestered | |
adj.扣押的;隐退的;幽静的;偏僻的v.使隔绝,使隔离( sequester的过去式和过去分词 );扣押 | |
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34 plunge | |
v.跳入,(使)投入,(使)陷入;猛冲 | |
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35 semblance | |
n.外貌,外表 | |
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36 geographical | |
adj.地理的;地区(性)的 | |
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37 exquisite | |
adj.精美的;敏锐的;剧烈的,感觉强烈的 | |
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38 protracted | |
adj.拖延的;延长的v.拖延“protract”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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39 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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40 abound | |
vi.大量存在;(in,with)充满,富于 | |
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41 drizzle | |
v.下毛毛雨;n.毛毛雨,蒙蒙细雨 | |
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42 yew | |
n.紫杉属树木 | |
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43 yews | |
n.紫杉( yew的名词复数 ) | |
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44 sluggish | |
adj.懒惰的,迟钝的,无精打采的 | |
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45 hearth | |
n.壁炉炉床,壁炉地面 | |
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46 luncheon | |
n.午宴,午餐,便宴 | |
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47 smoothly | |
adv.平滑地,顺利地,流利地,流畅地 | |
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48 verge | |
n.边,边缘;v.接近,濒临 | |
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49 demon | |
n.魔鬼,恶魔 | |
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50 synopsis | |
n.提要,梗概 | |
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51 contingencies | |
n.偶然发生的事故,意外事故( contingency的名词复数 );以备万一 | |
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52 physically | |
adj.物质上,体格上,身体上,按自然规律 | |
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53 mused | |
v.沉思,冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 );沉思自语说(某事) | |
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54 velvet | |
n.丝绒,天鹅绒;adj.丝绒制的,柔软的 | |
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55 blurred | |
v.(使)变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 );(使)难以区分;模模糊糊;迷离 | |
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56 tenant | |
n.承租人;房客;佃户;v.租借,租用 | |
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57 inquiries | |
n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 );疑问;探究;打听 | |
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58 elusive | |
adj.难以表达(捉摸)的;令人困惑的;逃避的 | |
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59 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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60 dispense | |
vt.分配,分发;配(药),发(药);实施 | |
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61 promptly | |
adv.及时地,敏捷地 | |
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62 unaware | |
a.不知道的,未意识到的 | |
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63 lurking | |
潜在 | |
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64 faculty | |
n.才能;学院,系;(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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65 solitary | |
adj.孤独的,独立的,荒凉的;n.隐士 | |
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66 trespassed | |
(trespass的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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67 dread | |
vt.担忧,忧虑;惧怕,不敢;n.担忧,畏惧 | |
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68 spectral | |
adj.幽灵的,鬼魂的 | |
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69 breach | |
n.违反,不履行;破裂;vt.冲破,攻破 | |
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70 dilemma | |
n.困境,进退两难的局面 | |
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71 unpacking | |
n.取出货物,拆包[箱]v.从(包裹等)中取出(所装的东西),打开行李取出( unpack的现在分词 );拆包;解除…的负担;吐露(心事等) | |
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72 detailed | |
adj.详细的,详尽的,极注意细节的,完全的 | |
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73 inspection | |
n.检查,审查,检阅 | |
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74 ledge | |
n.壁架,架状突出物;岩架,岩礁 | |
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75 abruptly | |
adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
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76 enchanting | |
a.讨人喜欢的 | |
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77 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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78 contentedly | |
adv.心满意足地 | |
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79 arabesque | |
n.阿拉伯式花饰;adj.阿拉伯式图案的 | |
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80 cedar | |
n.雪松,香柏(木) | |
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81 squat | |
v.蹲坐,蹲下;n.蹲下;adj.矮胖的,粗矮的 | |
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82 beheld | |
v.看,注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 );瞧;看呀;(叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现)哎哟 | |
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83 garb | |
n.服装,装束 | |
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84 attic | |
n.顶楼,屋顶室 | |
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85 impelled | |
v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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86 vaguely | |
adv.含糊地,暖昧地 | |
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87 precipitate | |
adj.突如其来的;vt.使突然发生;n.沉淀物 | |
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88 shrugged | |
vt.耸肩(shrug的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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89 interval | |
n.间隔,间距;幕间休息,中场休息 | |
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90 scramble | |
v.爬行,攀爬,杂乱蔓延,碎片,片段,废料 | |
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91 obliterated | |
v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 );涂去;擦掉;彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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92 spine | |
n.脊柱,脊椎;(动植物的)刺;书脊 | |
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93 ascent | |
n.(声望或地位)提高;上升,升高;登高 | |
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94 portentous | |
adj.不祥的,可怕的,装腔作势的 | |
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95 dilatory | |
adj.迟缓的,不慌不忙的 | |
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96 reminders | |
n.令人回忆起…的东西( reminder的名词复数 );提醒…的东西;(告知该做某事的)通知单;提示信 | |
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