BUT the worst of all to Mrs. Ochterlony was that little Hugh had been there—Hugh, who was six years old, and so intelligent for his age. The child was very anxious to know what it meant, and why she knelt by his father’s side while all the other people were standing1. Was it something particular they were praying for, which Mrs. Kirkman, and the rest did not want? Mary satisfied him as she best could, and by-and-by he forgot, and began to play with his little brother as usual; but his mother knew that so strange a scene could not fail to leave some impression. She sat by herself that long day, avoiding her husband for perhaps the first time in her life, and imagining a hundred possibilities to herself. It seemed to her as if everybody who ever heard of her henceforth must hear of this, and as if she must go through the world with a continual doubt upon her; and Mary’s weakness was to prize fair reputation and spotless honour above everything in the world. Perhaps Mrs. Kirkman was not so far wrong after all, and there was a higher meaning in the unlooked-for blow that thus struck her at her tenderest point; but that was an idea she could not receive. She could not think that God had anything to do with her husband’s foolish restlessness, and her own impatient submission2. It was a great deal more like a malicious3 devil’s work, than anything a beneficent providence4 could have arranged. This way of thinking was far from bringing Mary any consolation5 or solace6, but still there was a certain reasonableness in her thoughts. And then an indistinct foreboding of harm to her children, she did not know what, or how to be brought about, weighed upon Mary’s mind. She kept looking at them as they played beside her, and thinking how, in the far future, the meaning of that scene he had been a witness to might flash into Hugh’s mind when he was a man, and throw a bewildering doubt upon his mother’s name, which perhaps she might not be living to clear up; and these ideas stung her like a nest of serpents, each waking up and darting7 its venom8 to her heart at a separate moment. She had been very sad and very sorry many a time before in her life,—she had tasted all the usual sufferings of humanity; and yet she had never been what may be called unhappy, tortured from within and without, dissatisfied with herself and everything about her. Major Ochterlony was in every sense of the word a good husband, and he had been Mary’s support and true companion in all her previous troubles. He might be absurd now and then, but he never was anything but kind and tender and sympathetic, as was the nature of the man. But the special feature of this misfortune was that it irritated and set her in arms against him, that it separated her from her closest friend and all her friends, and that it made even the sight and thought of her children, a pain to her among all her other pains.
This was the wretched way in which Mary spent the day of her second wedding. Naturally, Major Ochterlony brought people in with him to lunch (probably it should be written tiffin, but our readers will accept the generic9 word), and was himself in the gayest spirits, and insisted upon champagne10, though he knew they could not afford it. “We ate our real wedding breakfast all by ourselves in that villanous little place at Gretna,” he said, with a boy’s enthusiasm, “and had trout11 out of the Solway: don’t you recollect12, Mary? Such trout! What a couple of happy young fools we were; and if every Gretna Green marriage turned out like mine!” the Major added, looking at his wife with beaming eyes. She had been terribly wounded by his hand, and was suffering secret torture, and was full of the irritation13 of pain; and yet she could not so steel her heart as not to feel a momentary14 softening16 at sight of the love and content in his eyes. But though he loved her he had sacrificed all her scruples17, and thrown a shadow upon her honour, and filled her heart with bitterness, to satisfy an unreasonable18 fancy of his own, and give peace, as he said, to his mind. All this was very natural, but in the pain of the moment it seemed almost inconceivable to Mary, who was obliged to conceal19 her mortification20 and suffering, and minister to her guests as she was wont21 to do, without making any show of the shadow that she felt to have fallen upon her life.
It was, however, tacitly agreed by the ladies of the station to make no difference, according to the example of the Colonel’s wife. Mrs. Kirkman had resolved upon that charitable course from the highest motives22, but the others were perhaps less elevated in their principles of conduct. Mrs. Hesketh, who was quite a worldly-minded woman, concluded it would be absurd for one to take any step unless they all did, and that on the whole, whatever were the rights of it, Mary could be no worse than she had been for all the long time they had known her. As for Miss Sorbette, who was strong-minded, she was disposed to consider that the moral courage the Ochterlonys had displayed in putting an end to an unsatisfactory state of affairs merited public appreciation23. Little Mrs. Askell, for her part, rushed headlong as soon as she heard of it, which fortunately was not till it was all over, to see her suffering protectress. Perhaps it was at that moment, for the first time, that the ensign’s wife felt the full benefit of being a married lady, able to stand up for her friend and stretch a small wing of championship over her. She rushed into Mrs. Ochterlony’s presence and arms like a little tempest, and cried and sobbed24 and uttered inarticulate exclamations25 on her friend’s shoulder, to Mary’s great surprise, who thought something had happened to her. Fortunately the little eighteen-year-old matron, after the first incoherence was over, began to find out that Mrs. Ochterlony looked the same as ever, and that nothing tragical26 could have happened, and so restrained the offer of her own countenance27 and support, which would have been more humbling28 to Mary than all the desertion in the world.
“What is the matter, my dear?” said Mrs. Ochterlony, who had regained29 her serene30 looks, though not her composed mind; and little Irish Emma, looking at her, was struck with such a sense of her own absurdity31 and temerity32 and ridiculous pretensions33, that she very nearly broke down again.
“I’ve been quarrelling with Charlie,” the quick-witted girl said, with the best grace she could, and added in her mind a secret clause to soften15 down the fiction,—“he is so aggravating34; and when I saw my Madonna looking so sweet and so still——”
“Hush!” said Mary “there was no need for crying about that—nor for telling fibs either,” she added, with a smile that went to the heart of the ensign’s wife. “You see there is nothing the matter with me,” Mrs. Ochterlony added; but notwithstanding her perfect composure it was in a harder tone.
“I never expected anything else,” said the impetuous little woman; “as if any nonsense could do any harm to you! And I love the Major, and I always have stood up for him; but oh, I should just like for once to box his ears.”
“Hush!” said Mary again; and then the need she had of sympathy prompted her for one moment to descend35 to the level of the little girl beside her, who was all sympathy and no criticism, which Mary knew to be a kind of friendship wonderfully uncommon36 in this world. “It did me no harm,” she said, feeling a certain relief in dropping her reserve, and making visible the one thing of which they were both thinking, and which had no need of being identified by name. “It did me no harm, and it pleased him. I don’t deny that it hurt at the time,” Mary added after a little pause, with a smile; “but that is all over now. You need not cry over me, my dear.”
“I—cry over you,” cried the prevaricating37 Emma, “as if such a thing had ever come into my head; but I did feel glad I was a married lady,” the little thing added; and then saw her mistake, and blushed and faltered38 and did not know what to say next. Mrs. Ochterlony knew very well what her young visitor meant, but she took no notice, as was the wisest way. She had steeled herself to all the consequences by this time, and knew she must accustom39 herself to such allusions40 and to take no notice of them. But it was hard upon her, who had been so good to the child, to think that little Emma was glad she was a married lady, and could in her turn give a certain countenance. All these sharp, secret, unseen arrows went direct to Mary’s heart.
But on the whole the regiment41 kept its word and made no difference. Mrs. Kirkman called every Wednesday and took Mary with her to the prayer-meeting which she held among the soldiers’ wives, and where she said she was having much precious fruit; and was never weary of representing to her companion that she had need of being brought down and humbled42, and that for her part she would rejoice in anything that would bring her dear Mary to a more serious way of thinking; which was an expression of feeling perfectly43 genuine on Mrs. Kirkman’s part, though at the same time she felt more and more convinced that Mrs. Ochterlony had been deceiving her, and was not by any means an innocent sufferer. The Colonel’s wife was quite sincere in both these beliefs, though it would be hard to say how she reconciled them to each other; but then a woman is not bound to be logical, whether she belongs to High or Low Church. At the same time she brought Mary sermons to read, with passages marked, which were adapted for both these states of feeling,—some consoling the righteous who were chastened because they were beloved, and some exhorting44 the sinners who had been long callous45 and now were beginning to awaken46 to a sense of their sins. Perhaps Mary, who was not very discriminating47 in point of sermon-books, read both with equal innocence48, not seeing their special application: but she could scarcely be so blind when her friend discoursed49 at the Mothers’ Meeting upon the Scripture50 Marys, and upon her who wept at the Saviour’s feet. Mrs. Ochterlony understood then, and never forgot afterwards, that it was that Mary with whom, in the mind of one of her most intimate associates, she had come to be identified. Not the Mary blessed among women, the type of motherhood and purity, but the other Mary, who was forgiven much because she had much loved. That night she went home with a swelling51 heart, wondering over the great injustice52 of human ways and dealings, and crying within herself to the Great Spectator who knew all against the evil thoughts of her neighbours. Was that what they all believed of her, all these women? and yet she had done nothing to deserve it, not so much as by a light look, or thought, or word; and it was not as if she could defend herself, or convince them of their cruelty: for nobody accused her, nobody reproached her—her friends, as they all said, made no difference. This was the sudden cloud that came over Mary in the very fairest and best moment of her life.
But as for the Major, he knew nothing about all that. It had been done for his peace of mind, and until the next thing occurred to worry him he was radiant with good-humour and satisfaction. If he saw at any time a cloud on his wife’s face, he thought it was because of that approaching necessity which took the pleasure out of everything even to himself, for the moment, when he thought of it—the necessity of sending Hugh “home.” “We shall still have Islay for a few years at least, my darling,” he would say, in his affectionate way; “and then the baby,”—for there was a baby, which had come some time after the event which we have just narrated53. That too must have had something to do, no doubt, with Mary’s low spirits. “He’ll get along famously with Aunt Agatha, and get spoiled, that fellow will,” the Major said; “and as for Islay, we’ll make a man of him.” And except at those moments, when, as we have just said, the thoughts of his little Hugh’s approaching departure struck him, Major Ochterlony was as happy and light-hearted as a man who is very well off in all his domestic concerns, and getting on in his profession, and who has a pleasant consciousness of doing his duty to all men and a grateful sense of the mercies of God, should be, and naturally is. When two people are yoked54 for life together, there is generally one of the two who bears the burden, while the other takes things easy. Sometimes it is the husband, as is fit and right, who has the heavy weight on his shoulders; but sometimes, and oftener than people think, it is the wife. And perhaps this was why Major Ochterlony was so frisky55 in his harness, and Madonna Mary felt her serenity56 fall into sadness, and was conscious of going on very slowly and heavily upon the way of life. Not that he was to blame, who was now, as always, the best husband in the regiment, or even in the world. Mary would not for all his fidgets, not for any reward, have changed him against Colonel Kirkman with his fishy57 eye, nor against Captain Hesketh’s jolly countenance, nor for anybody else within her range of vision. He was very far from perfect, and in utter innocence had given her a wound which throbbed58 and bled daily whichever way she turned herself, and which she would never cease to feel all her life; but still at the same time he stood alone in the world, so far as Mary’s heart was concerned: for true love is, of all things on earth, the most pertinacious59 and unreasonable, let the philosophers say what they will.
And then the baby, for his part, was not like what the other babies had been; he was not a great fellow, like Hugh and Islay; but puny60 and pitiful and weakly,—a little selfish soul that would leave his mother no rest. She had been content to leave the other boys to Providence and Nature, tending them tenderly, wholesomely61, and not too much, and hoping to make men of them some day; but with this baby Mary fell to dreaming, wondering often as he lay in her lap what his future would be. She used to ask herself unconsciously, without knowing why, what his influence might be on the lives of his brothers, who were like and yet so unlike him: though when she roused up she rebuked62 herself, and thought how much more reasonable it would be to speculate upon Hugh’s influence, who was the eldest63, or even upon Islay, who had the longest head in the regiment, and looked as if he meant to make some use of it one day. To think of the influence of little weakly Wilfrid coming to be of any permanent importance in the lives of those two strong fellows seemed absurd enough; and yet it was an idea which would come back to her, when she thought without thinking, and escaped as it were into a spontaneous state of mind. The name even was a weak-minded sort of name, and did not please Mary; and all sorts of strange fancies came into her head as she sat with the pitiful little peevish64 baby, who insisted upon having all her attention, lying awake and fractious upon her wearied knee.
Thus it was that the first important scene of her history came to an end, with thorns which she never dreamed of planted in Mrs. Ochterlony’s way, and a still greater and more unthought-of cloud rising slowly upon the broken serenity of her life.
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1
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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submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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solace
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| n.安慰；v.使快乐；vt.安慰(物)，缓和 | |
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7
darting
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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8
venom
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| n.毒液，恶毒，痛恨 | |
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9
generic
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| adj.一般的，普通的，共有的 | |
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10
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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11
trout
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| n.鳟鱼；鲑鱼(属) | |
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12
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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13
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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15
soften
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| v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和 | |
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16
softening
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| 变软，软化 | |
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17
scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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18
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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19
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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mortification
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| n.耻辱，屈辱 | |
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21
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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22
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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23
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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24
sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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25
exclamations
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| n.呼喊( exclamation的名词复数 )；感叹；感叹语；感叹词 | |
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26
tragical
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| adj. 悲剧的, 悲剧性的 | |
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27
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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28
humbling
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| adj.令人羞辱的v.使谦恭( humble的现在分词 )；轻松打败（尤指强大的对手）；低声下气 | |
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29
regained
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| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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30
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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31
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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32
temerity
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| n.鲁莽，冒失 | |
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33
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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34
aggravating
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| adj.恼人的，讨厌的 | |
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35
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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36
uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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37
prevaricating
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| v.支吾( prevaricate的现在分词 )；搪塞；说谎 | |
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38
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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39
accustom
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| vt.使适应，使习惯 | |
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40
allusions
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| 暗指，间接提到( allusion的名词复数 ) | |
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41
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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42
humbled
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| adj. 卑下的，谦逊的，粗陋的 vt. 使 ... 卑下，贬低 | |
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43
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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44
exhorting
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| v.劝告，劝说( exhort的现在分词 ) | |
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45
callous
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| adj.无情的，冷淡的，硬结的，起老茧的 | |
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46
awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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47
discriminating
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| a.有辨别能力的 | |
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48
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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49
discoursed
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| 演说（discourse的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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50
scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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51
swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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52
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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53
narrated
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| v.故事( narrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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54
yoked
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| 结合（yoke的过去式形式） | |
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55
frisky
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| adj.活泼的，欢闹的；n.活泼，闹着玩；adv.活泼地，闹着玩地 | |
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56
serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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57
fishy
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| adj. 值得怀疑的 | |
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58
throbbed
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| 抽痛( throb的过去式和过去分词 )； （心脏、脉搏等）跳动 | |
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59
pertinacious
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| adj.顽固的 | |
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60
puny
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| adj.微不足道的，弱小的 | |
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61
wholesomely
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| 卫生地，有益健康地 | |
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62
rebuked
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| 责难或指责( rebuke的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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63
eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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64
peevish
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| adj.易怒的，坏脾气的 | |
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