“Why, Cuelar,” he exclaimed, “I thought you were at Cajamarca!”
Don Alonso opened his eyes in surprise, evidently not understanding.
“Come, come, Cuelar, you may confess. I shall not be angry. Both Maria-Teresa and I agree that your little revenge was a very neat one.”
“My revenge?...”
“Of course! The bracelet!”
“What bracelet?”
At this moment Maria-Teresa and Dick joined the group. Maria-Teresa, seeing her father laughing as he talked, felt quite sure that the mystery of the bracelet had already been cleared up.
“Thank you ever so much,” she said, holding out the slim hand adorned6 by the heavy bracelet “You see, I wear it as a token of friendship.”
“But I should never have permitted myself such a liberty,” protested the young man, looking in amazement7 from one to the other.
“Are you serious?... It really was not you?”
“No!... But what does it all mean?... And what a peculiar8 bracelet.”
“Do you not recognize it?” laughed Maria-Teresa, still unconvinced. “It is, apparently9, the Golden Sun bracelet which the Indian priests always send to the Bride of the Sun at the Interaymi.... And as you, I understand, were the originator of my nickname, I naturally supposed that, in spite of everything you heard, you bore no malice10 to the Virgin11 of the Sun.”
“What a charming idea! I am only sorry,” he added, “that it was not mine. I shall never forgive myself for not having thought of it. You must attribute it, se?orita, to one of those other unfortunates who, like myself, have worshiped in vain.... There is Pedro Ribera.... He looks dark enough to have done it.... Ribera!”
But Ribera knew no more of the bracelet than Don Alonso. He also admired the strange jewel, and was equally sorry he had not sent it.
Don Christobal was becoming irritated, and was sorry now that he had mentioned the matter to them. He could not, without appearing ridiculous, ask them not to speak of it, and he knew very well that within two hours every tea-table in the Plaza12 Mayor would be discussing the new topic. Maria-Teresa guessed his thoughts.
“As our guess was wrong, the whole thing rather loses point So we must wait until the generous donor13 comes and confesses. In the meantime, let it be forgotten.” And, slipping off the bracelet, she put it into her reticule.
“I wonder if it was Huascar,” suggested Dick, as the two young men left them.
“Huascar? Why Huascar?” asked the Marquis.
“Well, it’s an old Indian bracelet.... He’s the only Indian I know of, and I know he is very devoted14 to the family. Suppose he found the bracelet in some old ruin and didn’t know what to do with it...
“Oh, let us not talk of it any more,” interrupted Maria-Teresa, slightly troubled. “What does it matter!... Besides, we are bound to know, sooner or later.... Some day a friend of father’s, back from the Sierra, will ask me why I am not wearing his present. That is sure to happen.”
“Of course it is,” affirmed Dick.
The Marquis, far from satisfied, and still seeking a possible explanation, suddenly turned on Dick.
“You sent it!” he exclaimed, triumphant15.
“I? Why, I have only just arrived in the country....”
“But you could very well have bought it when the liner put in at Guayaquil, and then sent it to some agent or other at Gajamarca to have it forwarded here.... You must have read the legend of the bracelet in one of your uncle’s books.”
“Really, Father!” protested Maria-Teresa. “Mr. Montgomery is an engineer....”
“Yes, yes, I know. Very hard-working.... Come here to try experiments with some new pump to clear the Cuzco gold-mines of water.... I know all that.... But that is no reason why he should not send you a bracelet.”
“But why should he, Father?”
“Is there not a reason why he should, my daughter?”
This time, Maria-Teresa blushed deeply and Dick tried to look unconcerned, while Don Chris-tobal smiled at them quizzically.
“So you thought your old father was blind, eh?... You thought he guessed nothing... that he did not understand what you had left behind you in London?... Well, Dick?”
“Really, sir... I... I... hardly dared hope....”
“Didn’t you?... There, there, that’s enough.... You may put the bracelet on her arm again.... Pair of young fools.” Maria-Teresa slipped her arm through her father’s, and squeezed it.
“Dear Father!”
Then, turning to Dick and opening her reticule, she whispered rapidly:
“Say you sent it. What can it matter?” Dick, completely taken aback, clasped the bracelet on Maria-Teresa’s wrist without protest. He scarcely heard a word said by the Marquis, who was delighted to have solved the mystery.
“Well, young man, you can flatter yourself that you thoroughly16 mystified everybody.” And with that he hurried after Uncle Francis, who had been carried off to drink champagne17 by a group of admirers.
Dick and Maria-Teresa, left alone, exchanged looks. A moment later, they were brought to earth again by the advent18 of a horde19 of excited scientists.
“But what will your father say when he finds out who really sent the bracelet?”
“He will forgive you. I only made you tell the story to reassure20 him.... Between you and me, those old tales told by Aunt Agnes and Irene were worrying him a little.... He is rather a child in some ways.”
Carriages and motors were rapidly filling with people starting for the excavations21 outside the town, and then on by rail to Ancon, where Uncle Francis was to be shown the latest Inca discoveries. The Marquis and Mr. Montgomery passed them in one motor. Maria-Teresa waved to them, and walked on towards the town with Dick.
They were all to meet again that evening to dine and pass the night at the Marquis’ sea-side villa22 between Lima and Ancon. Uncle Francis would thus be able to begin his researches the very next morning, for Don Christobal’s villa, itself a treasure-house of antiques, stood in the very center of the excavations.
Meanwhile, the young people, less interested in things of death than the members of the Geographical and Archaeological Society, went to explore Lima. It was only after a long walk in the Pascos de Amancaes that they in their turn started by motor over an execrable road.
The approach of night could already be felt, and the great plain over which they were speeding was made even more desolate23 by the presence of the slow-flying gallinazos, or black vultures, overhead. These scavengers, half-starved in appearance, are the common adjuncts of scenery in Peru, tolerated and even respected, as they are, by a grateful municipality.
Here and there were haciendas, each with its group of pastures and grazing horses, kept from galloping25 into the surrounding waste by the four-foot mud walls. Otherwise, it was a sandy desert, at some points dotted with skeletons of a long-dead race dug up by curious scientists and then left to bleach26 in the sun.
“Not exactly cheerful,” commented Dick.
Maria-Teresa, intent on her driving, did not answer, but pointed27 with one gauntleted hand at a group of half-breeds playing bowls with human skulls28 at the corner of a hacienda.
They were soon in the outskirts29 of Ancon, and found the Marquis, Uncle Francis, and their fellow-scientists busily arguing in the center of an Inca cemetery30. On all sides were opened tombs, each containing a mummy rudely drawn31 from its thousand-year sleep by the pick of the excavator. Dick and Maria-Teresa had left their motor, but did not join the others. Instead, they wandered silently, almost sadly, in another direction, and the car had started off again in the care of the negro chauffeur32, to be garaged at Ancon.
“It is horrible,” said Maria-Teresa, pressing Dick’s hand. “Why cannot they leave them in peace?”
Seated on a little mound33 well out of sight of the others, they forgot their surroundings. And it was in this horrible burial-ground they exchanged their first true lovers’ kiss.
The sound of voices brought them back to reality. The president of the Society, followed by an interested retinue34, was explaining the most interesting tombs.
“Walking through this necropolis,” he said, “it is no effort to evoke35 the shades of the Incas, and to feel for a minute as if one were living among them.... Here, six feet below ground, we first found a dog which had been sacrificed on its master’s tomb.... The dead man’s wife and chief servants also followed him to the next world.... We next found the wife’s body.... Like the dog, she had been strangled, probably because she had not had the courage to take her own life.... Finally, we heard the Indian workman cry ont, ‘Aqui esta el muer to.’ (Here is the dead one)... for to the native mind, the only body worthy36 of notice is that of the master.... When we cut the thongs37 and unrolled the wrappings about him—the man had evidently been a great chief—we found the mummy in an extraordinary state of preservation,—the head was almost intact.... Gentlemen, the ancient Egyptians did no better.”
At this moment, excited ones from another part of the cemetery attracted their attention, and a workman ran up to tell them that a sensational38 discovery had been made—the tomb of three Inca chiefs with strange-shaped skulls. Dick and Maria-Teresa followed the others to the spot indicated.
When they reached the newly-discovered tomb, workmen were passing up to the surface little sacks full of corn, jars which had once contained chicha—all the things necessary for a long voyage. Then came golden-vases, silver amphora, goblets39, hammered statuettes, jewels:—a veritable treasure brought to light by one Stroke of the pick. Finally, the three mummies were brought to the surface and unrolled with every precaution. One of the scientists present bent40 down to uncover the faces, and there was a murmur41 of horror from those present.
To understand what Dick and Maria-Teresa had been among the first to see, it is necessary for the reader to know that it was customary among the Incas to shape living skulls to any form they wished. This strange custom exists even in modern days, though in a far lesser42 degree, among the Basque inhabitants of the Pyrenees. The skulls of babies, set in vices43 or bound into various molds, were gradually deformed44 till they took the shape of a sugar-loaf, of a squarish box, of an enormous lime, and so forth45. Phrenology was evidently a science known to the Incas, who, precursors46 of Gall24 and Spezhurn, thus sought to develop abnormally the intellectual or warlike qualities of a child by compressing or enlarging such and such a part of the brain. It has been proved, though, that this practise was allowed only in the case of children of the Inca himself, called upon in afterlife to take high position in the State. The common people kept their normal skulls and normal brains.
Of the three heads just brought to light, one was cuneiform—a monstrous47 sugar-loaf. It was horrible to see this nightmare face, like the head of a beast of the Apocalypse, framed in locks which seemed to be still living as they gently moved in the sea breeze. The second head was flattened48 out, cap-like, with a huge bump at the back.. The third was almost square, resembling nothing so much as a small valise.
Maria-Teresa shrank before this triple horror and, despite his evident curiosity, drew her fiancé away from the violated sepulchre. They strolled down to the beach, where the Pacific murmured gently as it came to rest on the sands. So peaceful is the sea at Ancon, so free from currents and gales49, that it has become the great resort of the inhabitants of Lima. At this season, however, it was still deserted50, so that Dick and Maria-Teresa met nobody during their walk to the Marquis’ villa.
It was dusk when they reached it, still under the depressing influence of the three strange heads, and vainly trying to joke the impression away. As the sun disappeared on the horizon, the wind rose and conjured51 up in the half-light pale sand-whorls which might have been so many phantoms52 dancing up from the huacas to reproach them for impiety53 and sacrilege. Though they were neither of them over-imaginative, the young people were glad to see the fat major-domo who came forward to announce that the Marquis and Uncle Francis had already arrived. He, at all events, was solid flesh and blood.
As Maria-Teresa entered the house, a little Quichua maid, Concha, literally54 threw herself at her mistress’ feet, protesting that she had been dead in the se?orita’s absence, and had been brought to life again by her return.
“See what devotion we get here for eight soles a month!” she laughed, completely cured of her fears by the sight of the familiar objects about her. “Into the bargain, she cooks puchero, our native stew55, to perfection. You must try it some day.”
“Se?orita,” interjected the maid, her broad lips parting in an enormous smile, “I have prepared locro for to-night.”
Dinner was not a very long meal. Everybody was tired, and Uncle Francis was anxious to be up early in the morning. Dick and Maria-Teresa prosaically56 enjoyed their locro—a maize57 cooked with meat, spiced and served with the chicha which still further heightens the taste of all popular dishes in Peru—and, when they parted at the doors of their rooms on the first floor, were quite ready to laugh over the incidents of the afternoon. Maria-Teresa’s hand lingered in Dick’s.
“Good night, little Bride of the Sun,” he said, and’ bending down, kissed the disk on the bracelet. “But surely you are not going to keep that thing on?... A bracelet from the Lord knows where and the Lord knows whom?”
“It is dear to me now, Dick.... Now that you have kissed it, it shall never leave me.... Good night.”
She disappeared into her room, and the young engineer had turned toward his when a shriek58 was heard, and Maria-Teresa rushed to the landing, in a panic of fear.
“They are in there! They are in there!” she gasped59, her teeth chattering60.
“What? What?... what is the matter?”
“The three living skulls!”
“Maria-Teresa!”
“I tell you they are! All three of them, staring in through the window!... They looked at me with such eyes... horrible, living eyes.... No, no!... Dick!... Don’t go in!”
Taking the light from her trembling hand, Dick went into the room. There was nothing to be seen. He crossed to the balcony, and threw open the French windows: on one side was the sea, on the other a panorama61 over the flat country and the Inca burial-ground. Everything was perfectly62 normal.
“Come, dear.... You must have imagined....”
“Dick, I tell you I saw them!”
“What did you see?”
“There, on the balcony, staring through the panes63.... Those three Inca chiefs with their hideous64 heads.”
“But, Maria-Teresa, be reasonable. They are dead.... You yourself saw them dug up.... Surely you cannot believe in ghosts....”
“Those I saw were not ghosts. They were living.”
Thinking to reassure her, he began to laugh heartily65.
“Don’t, Dick, don’t!... I did see them... they were exactly like those in the grave... the sugar-loaf, the cap, and the valise.... Exactly the same!... But what did they come here for?”
Don Christobal, drawn from the smoking-room by the noise, jeered66 at his daughter’s fears. Uncle Francis, too, appeared in a night-cap, which started everybody laughing except Maria-Teresa. To quieten her, the major-domo was sent round the house and explored the grounds. He returned to report that he had found nothing.
“You are worried by what you saw this afternoon, my child,” said the Marquis.
But Maria-Teresa would not reenter the room, and ordered another on the opposite side of the villa to be prepared for her. Dick, using every argument he could think of, finally convinced her that she had been the victim of a hallucination. Half ashamed of herself, she made him go out to the first-floor balcony with her, trying, in her turn, to efface67 any unfavorable impression she might have made.
The balcony on which they were was almost directly over the sea, for on this side the beach reached right up to the walls of the villa. After a time, the immense peace of the night completed Dick’s work, and the girl was perfectly quiet when she took off her bracelet.
“I think this is what has been worrying me,” she said. “I never before imagined that I saw a ghost....” And she threw the bracelet into the sea.
“A very good place for it,” agreed Dick. “A ring will do ever so much better. You do at all events know where that comes from.”
Before long the whole house was at rest, and the remainder of the night passed by quietly. But at seven o’clock, when people were beginning to stir again, an agonized68 scream from Maria-Teresa’s room sent the servants rushing to her aid. When they entered the room, they found their mistress sitting up in Red, staring at her wrist with horror-stricken eyes. The Golden Sun bracelet had returned during the night!
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1
geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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2
statistical
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| adj.统计的，统计学的 | |
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basking
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| v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的现在分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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bracelet
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| n.手镯，臂镯 | |
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adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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7
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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8
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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9
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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10
malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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11
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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12
plaza
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| n.广场，市场 | |
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donor
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| n.捐献者；赠送人；(组织、器官等的)供体 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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15
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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17
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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advent
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| n.(重要事件等的)到来，来临 | |
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19
horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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reassure
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| v.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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21
excavations
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| n.挖掘( excavation的名词复数 )；开凿；开凿的洞穴（或山路等）；（发掘出来的）古迹 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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24
gall
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| v.使烦恼，使焦躁，难堪；n.磨难 | |
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25
galloping
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| adj. 飞驰的, 急性的 动词gallop的现在分词形式 | |
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26
bleach
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| vt.使漂白；vi.变白；n.漂白剂 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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skulls
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| 颅骨( skull的名词复数 )； 脑袋； 脑子； 脑瓜 | |
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outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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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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chauffeur
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| n.(受雇于私人或公司的)司机；v.为…开车 | |
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mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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retinue
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| n.侍从；随员 | |
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evoke
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| vt.唤起，引起，使人想起 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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thongs
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| 的东西 | |
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sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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goblets
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| n.高脚酒杯( goblet的名词复数 ) | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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deformed
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| adj.畸形的；变形的；丑的，破相了的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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precursors
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| n.先驱( precursor的名词复数 )；先行者；先兆；初期形式 | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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gales
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| 龙猫 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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51
conjured
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| 用魔术变出( conjure的过去式和过去分词 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现 | |
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52
phantoms
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| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
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53
impiety
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| n.不敬；不孝 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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55
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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prosaically
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| adv.无聊地；乏味地；散文式地；平凡地 | |
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57
maize
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| n.玉米 | |
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58
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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59
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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60
chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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61
panorama
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| n.全景，全景画，全景摄影，全景照片[装置] | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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panes
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| 窗玻璃( pane的名词复数 ) | |
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64
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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65
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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66
jeered
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| v.嘲笑( jeer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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67
efface
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| v.擦掉，抹去 | |
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68
agonized
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| v.使（极度）痛苦，折磨( agonize的过去式和过去分词 )；苦斗；苦苦思索；感到极度痛苦 | |
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