True to their words, at the end of October, Mrs. Carbuncle and Miss Roanoke, and Lord George de Bruce Carruthers and Sir Griffin Tewett, arrived at Portray1 Castle. And for a couple of days there was a visitor whom Lizzie was very glad to welcome, but of whose good nature on the occasion Mr. Camperdown thought very ill indeed. This was John Eustace. His sister-inlaw wrote to him in very pressing language; and as — so he said to Mr. Camperdown — he did not wish to seem to quarrel with his brother’s widow as long as such seeming might be avoided, he accepted the invitation. If there was to be a lawsuit2 about the diamonds, that must be Mr. Camperdown’s affair. Lizzie had never entertained her friends in style before. She had had a few people to dine with her in London and once or twice had received company on an evening. But in all her London doings there had been the trepidation3 of fear, to be accounted for by her youth and widowhood; and it was at Portray — her own house at Portray — that it would best become her to exercise hospitality. She had bided4 her time even there, but now she meant to show her friends that she had got a house of her own.
She wrote even to her husband’s uncle, the bishop5, asking him down to Portray. He could not come, but sent an affectionate answer, and thanked her for thinking of him. Many people she asked who, she felt sure, would not come, and one or two of them accepted her invitation. John Eustace promised to be with her for two days. When Frank had left her, going out of her presence in the manner that has been described, she actually wrote to him, begging him to join her party. This was her note:
“Come to me, just for a week,” she said, “when my people are here, so that I may not seem to be deserted6. Sit at the bottom of my table, and be to me as a brother might. I shall expect you to do so much for me.” To this he replied that he would come during the first week in November.
And she got a clergyman down from London — the Rev7. Joseph Emilius, of whom it was said that he was born a Jew in Hungary, and that his name in his own country had been Mealyus. At the present time he was among the most eloquent8 of London preachers, and was reputed by some to have reached such a standard of pulpit oratory9 as to have had no equal within the memory of living hearers. In regard to his reading it was acknowledged that no one since Mrs. Siddons had touched him. But he did not get on very well with any particular bishop, and there was doubt in the minds of some people whether there was or was not any — Mrs. Emilius. He had come up quite suddenly within the last season, and had made church-going quite a pleasant occupation to Lizzie Eustace.
On the last day of October Mr. Emilius and Mr. John Eustace came, each alone. Mrs. Carbuncle and Miss Roanoke came over with post-horses from Ayr, as also did Lord George and Sir Griffin about an hour after them. Frank was not yet expected. He had promised to name a day, and had not yet named it.
“Varra weel, varra weel,” Gowran had said when he was told of what was about to occur, and was desired to make preparations necessary in regard to the outside plenishing of the house; “nae doot she’ll do with her ain what pleases her ainself. The mair ye poor out, the less there’ll be left in. Mr. Jo-ohn coming? I’ll be glad then to see Mr. Jo-ohn. Oo, ay; aits; there’ll be aits eneuch. And anither coo! You’ll want twa ither coos. I’ll see to the coos.” And Andy Gowran, in spite of the internecine10 warfare11 which existed between him and his mistress, did see to the hay, and the cows, and the oats, and the extra servants that were wanted inside and outside the house. There was enmity between him and Lady Eustace, and he didn’t care who knew it; but he took her wages and he did her work.
Mrs. Carbuncle was a wonderful woman. She was the wife of a man with whom she was very rarely seen, whom nobody knew, who was something in the City, but somebody who never succeeded in making money; and yet she went everywhere. She had at least the reputation of going everywhere, and did go to a great many places. Carbuncle had no money — so it was said; and she had none. She was the daughter of a man who had gone to New York and had failed there. Of her own parentage no more was known. She had a small house in one of the very small May Fair streets, to which she was wont12 to invite her friends for five o’clock tea. Other receptions she never attempted. During the London seasons she always kept a carriage, and during the winters she always had hunters. Who paid for them no one knew or cared. Her dress was always perfect, as far as fit and performance went. As to approving Mrs. Carbuncle’s manner of dress — that was a question of taste. Audacity13 may, perhaps, be said to have been the ruling principle of her toilet; not the audacity of indecency, which, let the satirists say what they may, is not efficacious in England, but audacity in colour, audacity in design, and audacity in construction. She would ride in the park in a black and yellow habit, and appear at the opera in white velvet14 without a speck15 of colour. Though certainly turned thirty, and probably nearer to forty, she would wear her jet-black hair streaming down her back, and when June came would drive about London in a straw hat. But yet it was always admitted that she was well dressed. And then would arise that question, Who paid the bills?
Mrs. Carbuncle was certainly a handsome woman. She was full-faced, with bold eyes, rather far apart, perfect black eyebrows16, a well-formed broad nose, thick lips, and regular teeth. Her chin was round and short, with perhaps a little bearing towards a double chin. But though her face was plump and round, there was a power in it, and a look of command, of which it was perhaps difficult to say in what features was the seat. But in truth the mind will lend a tone to every feature, and it was the desire of Mrs. Carbuncle’s heart to command. But perhaps the wonder of her face was its complexion17. People said, before they knew her, that, as a matter of course, she had been made beautiful forever. But, though that too brilliant colour was almost always there, covering the cheeks but never touching18 the forehead or the neck, it would at certain moments shift, change, and even depart. When she was angry, it would vanish for a moment and then return intensified19. There was no chemistry on Mrs. Carbuncle’s cheek; and yet it was a tint20 so brilliant and so little transparent21 as almost to justify22 a conviction that it could not be genuine. There were those who declared that nothing in the way of complexion so beautiful as that of Mrs. Carbuncle’s had been seen on the face of any other woman in this age, and there were others who called her an exaggerated milkmaid. She was tall, too, and had learned so to walk as though half the world belonged to her.
Her niece, Miss Roanoke, was a lady of the same stamp, and of similar beauty, with those additions and also with those drawbacks which belong to youth. She looked as though she were four-and-twenty, but in truth she was no more than eighteen. When seen beside her aunt, she seemed to be no more than half the elder lady’s size; and yet her proportions were not insignificant23. She, too, was tall, and was as one used to command, and walked as though she were a young Juno. Her hair was very dark — almost black — and very plentiful24. Her eyes were large and bright, though too bold for a girl so young. Her nose and mouth were exactly as her aunt’s, but her chin was somewhat longer, so as to divest25 her face of that plump roundness which perhaps took something from the majesty26 of Mrs. Carbuncle’s appearance. Miss Roanoke’s complexion was certainly marvellous. No one thought that she had been made beautiful forever, for the colour would go and come and shift and change with every word and every thought; but still it was there, as deep on her cheeks as on her aunt’s, though somewhat more transparent, and with more delicacy27 of tint as the bright hues28 faded away and became merged29 in the almost marble whiteness of her skin. With Mrs. Carbuncle there was no merging30 and fading. The red and white bordered one another on her cheek without any merging, as they do on a flag.
Lucinda Roanoke was undoubtedly31 a very handsome woman. It probably never occurred to man or woman to say that she was lovely. She had sat for her portrait during the last winter, and her picture had caused much remark in the Exhibition. Some said that she might be a Brinvilliers, others a Cleopatra, and others again a Queen of Sheba. In her eyes as they were limned32 there had been nothing certainly of love, but they who likened her to the Egyptian queen believed that Cleopatra’s love had always been used simply to assist her ambition. They who took the Brinvilliers side of the controversy33 were men so used to softness and flattery from women as to have learned to think that a woman silent, arrogant34, and hard of approach, must be always meditating35 murder. The disciples36 of the Queen of Sheba school, who formed perhaps the more numerous party, were led to their opinion by the majesty of Lucinda’s demeanour rather than by any clear idea in their own minds of the lady who visited Solomon. All men, however, agreed in this, that Lucinda Roanoke was very handsome, but that she was not the sort of girl with whom a man would wish to stray away through the distant beech-trees at a picnic.
In truth she was silent, grave, and, if not really haughty37, subject to all the signs of haughtiness38. She went everywhere with her aunt, and allowed herself to be walked out at dances, and to be accosted39 when on horseback, and to be spoken to at parties; but she seemed hardly to trouble herself to talk; and as for laughing, flirting41, or giggling42, one might as well expect such levity43 from a marble Minerva. During the last winter she had taken to hunting with her aunt, and already could ride well to hounds. If assistance were wanted at a gate, or in the management of a fence, and the servant who attended the two ladies were not near enough to give it, she would accept it as her due from the man nearest to her; but she rarely did more than bow her thanks, and, even by young lords, or hard-riding handsome colonels, or squires44 of undoubted thousands, she could hardly ever be brought to what might be called a proper hunting-field conversation. All of which things were noted45, and spoken of, and admired. It must be presumed that Lucinda Roanoke was in want of a husband, and yet no girl seemed to take less pains to get one. A girl ought not to be always busying herself to bring down a man, but a girl ought to give herself some charms. A girl so handsome as Lucinda Roanoke, with pluck enough to ride like a bird, dignity enough for a duchess, and who was undoubtedly clever, ought to put herself in the way of taking such good things as her charms and merits would bring her; but Lucinda Roanoke stood aloof46 and despised everybody. So it was that Lucinda was spoken of when her name was mentioned; and her name was mentioned a good deal after the opening of the exhibition of pictures.
There was some difficulty about her — as to who she was. That she was an American was the received opinion. Her mother, as well as Mrs. Carbuncle, had certainly been in New York. Carbuncle was a London man; but it was supposed that Mr. Roanoke was, or had been, an American. The received opinion was correct. Lucinda had been born in New York, had been educated there till she was sixteen, and then been taken to Paris for nine months, and from Paris had been brought to London by her aunt. Mrs. Carbuncle always spoke40 of Lucinda’s education as having been thoroughly47 Parisian. Of her own education and antecedents, Lucinda never spoke at all. “I’ll tell you what it is,” said a young scamp from Eton to his elder sister, when her character and position were once being discussed, “she’s a heroine, and would shoot a fellow as soon as look at him.” In that scamp’s family Lucinda was ever afterwards called the heroine.
The manner in which Lord George de Bruce Carruthers had attached himself to these ladies was a mystery; but then Lord George was always mysterious. He was a young man — so considered — about forty-five years of age, who had never done anything in the manner of other people. He hunted a great deal, but he did not fraternise with hunting men, and would appear now in this county and now in that, with an utter disregard of grass, fences, friendships, or foxes. Leicester, Essex, Ayrshire, or the Baron48 had equal delights for him; and in all counties he was quite at home. He had never owned a fortune, and had never been known to earn a shilling. It was said that early in life he had been apprenticed49 to an attorney at Aberdeen as George Carruthers. His third cousin, the Marquis of Killiecrankie, had been killed out hunting; the second scion50 of the noble family had fallen at Balaclava; a third had perished in the Indian Mutiny; and a fourth, who did reign51 for a few months, died suddenly, leaving a large family of daughters. Within three years the four brothers vanished, leaving among them no male heir, and George’s elder brother, who was then in a West India regiment52, was called home from Demerara to be Marquis of Killiecrankie. By a usual exercise of the courtesy of the Crown, all the brothers were made lords, and some twelve years before the date of our story George Carruthers, who had long since left the attorney’s office at Aberdeen, became Lord George de Carruthers. How he lived no one knew. That his brother did much for him was presumed to be impossible, as the property entailed53 on the Killiecrankie title certainly was not large. He sometimes went into the City, and was supposed to know something about shares. Perhaps he played a little, and made a few bets. He generally lived with men of means, or perhaps with one man of means at a time; but they who knew him well declared that he never borrowed a shilling from a friend, and never owed a guinea to a tradesman. He always had horses, but never had a home. When in London he lodged54 in a single room, and dined at his club. He was a Colonel of Volunteers, having got up the regiment known as the Long Shore Riflemen — the roughest regiment of volunteers in all England — and was reputed to be a bitter Radical55. He was suspected even of republican sentiments, and ignorant young men about London hinted that he was the grand centre of the British Fenians. He had been invited to stand for the Tower Hamlets, but had told the deputation which waited upon him that he knew a thing worth two of that. Would they guarantee his expenses, and then give him a salary? The deputation doubted its ability to promise so much. “I more than doubt it,” said Lord George; and then the deputation went away.
In person he was a long-legged, long-bodied, long-faced man, with rough whiskers and a rough beard on his upper lip but with a shorn chin. His eyes were very deep set in his head, and his cheeks were hollow and sallow; and yet he looked to be and was a powerful, healthy man. He had large hands, which seemed to be all bone, and long arms, and a neck which looked to be long, because he so wore his shirt that much of his throat was always bare. It was manifest enough that he liked to have good-looking women about him, and yet nobody presumed it probable that he would marry. For the last two or three years there had been friendship between him and Mrs. Carbuncle; and during the last season he had become almost intimate with our Lizzie. Lizzie thought that perhaps he might be the Corsair whom, sooner or later in her life, she must certainly encounter.
Sir Griffin Tewett, who at the present period of his existence was being led about by Lord George, was not exactly an amiable56 young baronet. Nor were his circumstances such as make a man amiable. He was nominally57 not only the heir to, but actually the possessor of a large property; but he could not touch the principal, and of the income only so much as certain legal curmudgeons58 would allow him. As Greystock had said, everybody was at law with him, so successful had been his father in mismanaging, and miscontrolling, and misappropriating the property. Tewett Hall had gone to rack and ruin for four years, and was now let almost for nothing. He was a fair, frail59 young man, with a bad eye, and a weak mouth, and a thin hand, who was fond of liqueurs, and hated to the death any acquaintance who won a five-pound note of him, or any tradesman who wished to have his bill paid. But he had this redeeming60 quality — that having found Lucinda Roanoke to be the handsomest woman he had ever seen, he did desire to make her his wife.
Such were the friends whom Lizzie Eustace received at Portray Castle on the first day of her grand hospitality — together with John Eustace and Mr. Joseph Emilius, the fashionable preacher from May Fair.
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portray
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| v.描写，描述；画(人物、景象等) | |
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lawsuit
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| n.诉讼，控诉 | |
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trepidation
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| n.惊恐，惶恐 | |
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bided
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| v.等待，停留( bide的过去式 )；居住；等待；面临 | |
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bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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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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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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internecine
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| adj.两败俱伤的 | |
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warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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audacity
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| n.大胆，卤莽，无礼 | |
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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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speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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intensified
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| v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tint
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| n.淡色，浅色；染发剂；vt.着以淡淡的颜色 | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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plentiful
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| adj.富裕的，丰富的 | |
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divest
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| v.脱去，剥除 | |
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majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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hues
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| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
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merged
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| （使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
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merging
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| 合并（分类） | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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limned
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| v.画( limn的过去式和过去分词 )；勾画；描写；描述 | |
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controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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meditating
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| a.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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haughtiness
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| n.傲慢；傲气 | |
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accosted
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| v.走过去跟…讲话( accost的过去式和过去分词 )；跟…搭讪；（乞丐等）上前向…乞讨；（妓女等）勾搭 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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flirting
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| v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的现在分词 ) | |
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giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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squires
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| n.地主，乡绅( squire的名词复数 ) | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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baron
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| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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apprenticed
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| 学徒，徒弟( apprentice的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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scion
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| n.嫩芽，子孙 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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entailed
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| 使…成为必要( entail的过去式和过去分词 )； 需要； 限定继承； 使必需 | |
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lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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nominally
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| 在名义上，表面地； 应名儿 | |
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curmudgeons
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| n.坏脾气的人，吝啬鬼，守财奴( curmudgeon的名词复数 ) | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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redeeming
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| 补偿的，弥补的 | |
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