IT WAS not until the late afternoon that Cecilia judged the vase repaired. It had baked all afternoon on a table by a south-facing window in the library, and now three fine meandering1 lines in the glaze2, converging3 like rivers in an atlas4, were all that showed. No one would ever know. As she crossed the library with the vase in both hands, she heard what she thought was the sound of bare feet on the hallway tiles outside the library door. Having passed many hours deliberately5 not thinking about Robbie Turner, she was outraged6 that he should be back in the house, once again without his socks. She stepped out into the hallway, determined7 to face down his insolence8, or his mockery, and was confronted instead by her sister, clearly in distress9. Her eyelids10 were swollen11 and pink, and she was pinching on her lower lip with forefinger12 and thumb, an old sign with Briony that some serious weeping was to be done.
“Darling! What’s up?”
Her eyes in fact were dry, and they lowered fractionally to take in the vase, then she pushed on past, to where the easel stood supporting the poster with the merry, multicolored title, and a Chagall-like montage of highlights from her play in watercolor scattered13 around the lettering—the tearful parents waving, the moonlit ride to the coast, the heroine on her sickbed, a wedding. She paused before it, and then, with one violent, diagonal stroke, ripped away more than half of it and let it fall to the floor. Cecilia put the vase down and hurried over, and knelt down to retrieve14 the fragment before her sister began to trample15 on it. This would not be the first time she had rescued Briony from self-destruction.
“Little Sis. Is it the cousins?”
She wanted to comfort her sister, for Cecilia had always loved to cuddle the baby of the family. When she was small and prone16 to nightmares—those terrible screams in the night—Cecilia used to go to her room and wake her. Come back, she used to whisper. It’s only a dream. Come back. And then she would carry her into her own bed. She wanted to put her arm round Briony’s shoulder now, but she was no longer tugging17 on her lip, and had moved away to the front door and was resting one hand on the great brass18 lion’s-head handle that Mrs. Turner had polished that afternoon.
“The cousins are stupid. But it’s not only that. It’s . . .” She trailed away, doubtful whether she should confide19 her recent revelation.
Cecilia smoothed the jagged triangle of paper and thought how her little sister was changing. It would have suited her better had Briony wept and allowed herself to be comforted on the silk chaise longue in the drawing room. Such stroking and soothing20 murmurs21 would have been a release for Cecilia after a frustrating22 day whose various crosscurrents of feeling she had preferred not to examine. Addressing Briony’s problems with kind words and caresses24 would have restored a sense of control. However, there was an element of autonomy in the younger girl’s unhappiness. She had turned her back and was opening the door wide.
“But what is it then?” Cecilia could hear the neediness25 in her own voice.
Beyond her sister, far beyond the lake, the driveway curved across the park, narrowed and converged26 over rising ground to a point where a tiny shape, made formless by the warping27 heat, was growing, and then flickered28 and seemed to recede29. It would be Hardman, who said he was too old to learn to drive a car, bringing the visitors in the trap.
Briony changed her mind and faced her sister. “The whole thing’s a mistake. It’s the wrong . . .” She snatched a breath and glanced away, a signal, Cecilia sensed, of a dictionary word about to have its first outing. “It’s the wrong genre30!” She pronounced it, as she thought, in the French way, monosyllabically, but without quite getting her tongue round the r.
“Jean?” Cecilia called after her. “What are you talking about?”
But Briony was hobbling away on soft white soles across the fiery31 gravel32.
Cecilia went to the kitchen to fill the vase, and carried it up to her bedroom to retrieve the flowers from the handbasin. When she dropped them in they once again refused to fall into the artful disorder33 she preferred, and instead swung round in the water into a willful neatness, with the taller stalks evenly distributed around the rim34. She lifted the flowers and let them drop again, and they fell into another orderly pattern. Still, it hardly mattered. It was difficult to imagine this Mr. Marshall complaining that the flowers by his bedside were too symmetrically displayed. She took the arrangement up to the second floor, along the creaking corridor to what was known as Auntie Venus’s room, and set the vase on a chest of drawers by a four-poster bed, thus completing the little commission her mother had set her that morning, eight hours before.
However, she did not immediately leave, for the room was pleasingly uncluttered by personal possessions—in fact, apart from Briony’s, it was the only tidy bedroom. And it was cool here, now that the sun had moved round the house. Every drawer was empty, every bare surface without so much as a fingerprint35. Under the chintz counterpane the sheets would be starchily pure. She had an impulse to slip her hand between the covers to feel them, but instead she moved deeper into Mr. Marshall’s room. At the foot of the four-poster, the seat of a Chippendale sofa had been so carefully straightened that sitting down would have seemed a desecration36. The air was smooth with the scent38 of wax, and in the honeyed light, the gleaming surfaces of the furniture seemed to ripple39 and breathe. As her approach altered her angle of view, the revelers on the lid of an ancient trousseau chest writhed40 into dance steps. Mrs. Turner must have passed through that morning. Cecilia shrugged41 away the association with Robbie. Being here was a kind of trespass42, with the room’s future occupant just a few hundred yards away from the house.
From where she had arrived by the window she could see that Briony had crossed the bridge to the island, and was walking down the grassy43 bank, and beginning to disappear among the lakeshore trees that surrounded the island temple. Further off, Cecilia could just make out the two hatted figures sitting up on the bench behind Hardman. Now she saw a third figure whom she had not noticed before, striding along the driveway toward the trap. Surely it was Robbie Turner on his way home. He stopped, and as the visitors approached, his outline seemed to fuse with that of the visitors. She could imagine the scene—the manly44 punches to the shoulder, the horseplay. She was annoyed that her brother could not know that Robbie was in disgrace, and she turned from the window with a sound of exasperation45, and set off for her room in search of a cigarette.
She had one packet remaining, and only after several minutes of irritable46 raking through her mess did she find it in the pocket of a blue silk dressing23 gown on her bathroom floor. She lit up as she descended47 the stairs to the hall, knowing that she would not have dared had her father been at home. He had precise ideas about where and when a woman should be seen smoking: not in the street, or any other public place, not on entering a room, not standing48 up, and only when offered, never from her own supply—notions as self-evident to him as natural justice. Three years among the sophisticates of Girton had not provided her with the courage to confront him. The lighthearted ironies49 she might have deployed50 among her friends deserted51 her in his presence, and she heard her own voice become thin when she attempted some docile52 contradiction. In fact, being at odds53 with her father about anything at all, even an insignificant54 domestic detail, made her uncomfortable, and nothing that great literature might have done to modify her sensibilities, none of the lessons of practical criticism, could quite deliver her from obedience55. Smoking on the stairway when her father was installed in his Whitehall ministry56 was all the revolt her education would allow, and still it cost her some effort.
As she reached the broad landing that dominated the hallway, Leon was showing Paul Marshall through the wide-open front entrance. Danny Hardman was behind them with their luggage. Old Hardman was just in view outside, gazing mutely at the five-pound note in his hand. The indirect afternoon light, reflected from the gravel and filtered through the fanlight, filled the entrance hall with the yellowish-orange tones of a sepia print. The men had removed their hats and stood waiting for her, smiling. Cecilia wondered, as she sometimes did when she met a man for the first time, if this was the one she was going to marry, and whether it was this particular moment she would remember for the rest of her life—with gratitude57, or profound and particular regret.
“Sis-Celia!” Leon called. When they embraced she felt against her collarbone through the fabric58 of his jacket a thick fountain pen, and smelled pipe smoke in the folds of his clothes, prompting a moment’s nostalgia59 for afternoon tea visits to rooms in men’s colleges, rather polite and anodyne60 occasions mostly, but cheery too, especially in winter.
Paul Marshall shook her hand and made a faint bow. There was something comically brooding about his face. His opener was conventionally dull.
“I’ve heard an awful lot about you.”
“And me you.” What she could remember was a telephone conversation with her brother some months before, during which they had discussed whether they had ever eaten, or would ever eat, an Amo bar.
“Emily’s lying down.”
It was hardly necessary to say it. As children they claimed to be able to tell from across the far side of the park whenever their mother had a migraine by a certain darkening at the windows.
“And the Old Man’s staying in town?”
“He might come later.”
Cecilia was aware that Paul Marshall was staring at her, but before she could look at him she needed to prepare something to say.
“The children were putting on a play, but it rather looks like it’s fallen apart.”
Marshall said, “That might have been your sister I saw down by the lake. She was giving the nettles61 a good thrashing.”
Leon stepped aside to let Hardman’s boy through with the bags. “Where are we putting Paul?”
“On the second floor.” Cecilia had inclined her head to direct these words at the young Hardman. He had reached the foot of the stairs and now stopped and turned, a leather suitcase in each hand, to face them where they were grouped, in the center of the checkered62, tiled expanse. His expression was of tranquil63 incomprehension. She had noticed him hanging around the children lately. Perhaps he was interested in Lola. He was sixteen, and certainly no boy. The roundness she remembered in his cheeks had gone, and the childish bow of his lips had become elongated64 and innocently cruel. Across his brow a constellation65 of acne had a new-minted look, its garishness66 softened67 by the sepia light. All day long, she realized, she had been feeling strange, and seeing strangely, as though everything was already long in the past, made more vivid by posthumous68 ironies she could not quite grasp.
She said to him patiently, “The big room past the nursery.”
“Auntie Venus’s room,” Leon said.
Auntie Venus had been for almost half a century a vital nursing presence across a swath of the Northern Territories in Canada. She was no one’s aunt particularly, or rather, she was Mr. Tallis’s dead second cousin’s aunt, but no one questioned her right, after her retirement69, to the room on the second floor where, for most of their childhoods, she had been a sweet-natured, bedridden invalid70 who withered71 away to an uncomplaining death when Cecilia was ten. A week later Briony was born.
Cecilia led the visitors into the drawing room, through the French windows, past the roses toward the swimming pool, which was behind the stable block and was surrounded on four sides by a high thicket72 of bamboo, with a tunnel-like gap for an entrance. They walked through, bending their heads under low canes73, and emerged onto a terrace of dazzling white stone from which the heat rose in a blast. In deep shadow, set well back from the water’s edge, was a white-painted tin table with a pitcher74 of iced punch under a square of cheesecloth. Leon unfolded the canvas chairs and they sat with their glasses in a shallow circle facing the pool. From his position between Leon and Cecilia, Marshall took control of the conversation with a ten-minute monologue75. He told them how wonderful it was, to be away from town, in tranquillity76, in the country air; for nine months, for every waking minute of every day, enslaved to a vision, he had shuttled between headquarters, his boardroom and the factory floor. He had bought a large house on Clapham Common and hardly had time to visit it. The launch of Rainbow Amo had been a triumph, but only after various distribution catastrophes77 which had now been set right; the advertising78 campaign had offended some elderly bishops79 so another was devised; then came the problems of success itself, unbelievable sales, new production quotas80, and disputes about overtime81 rates, and the search for a site for a second factory about which the four unions involved had been generally sullen82 and had needed to be charmed and coaxed83 like children; and now, when all had been brought to fruition, there loomed84 the greater challenge yet of Army Amo, the khaki bar with the Pass the Amo! slogan; the concept rested on an assumption that spending on the Armed Forces must go on increasing if Mr. Hitler did not pipe down; there was even a chance that the bar could become part of the standard-issue ration37 pack; in that case, if there were to be a general conscription, a further five factories would be needed; there were some on the board who were convinced there should and would be an accommodation with Germany and that Army Amo was a dead duck; one member was even accusing Marshall of being a warmonger85; but, exhausted86 as he was, and maligned87, he would not be turned away from his purpose, his vision. He ended by repeating that it was wonderful to find oneself “way out here” where one could, as it were, catch one’s breath.
Watching him during the first several minutes of his delivery, Cecilia felt a pleasant sinking sensation in her stomach as she contemplated88 how deliciously self-destructive it would be, almost erotic, to be married to a man so nearly handsome, so hugely rich, so unfathomably stupid. He would fill her with his big-faced children, all of them loud, boneheaded boys with a passion for guns and football and aeroplanes. She watched him in profile as he turned his head toward Leon. A long muscle twitched89 above the line of his jaw90 as he spoke91. A few thick black hairs curled free of his eyebrow92, and from his earholes there sprouted93 the same black growth, comically kinked like pubic hair. He should instruct his barber.
The smallest shift in her gaze brought her Leon’s face, but he was staring politely at his friend and seemed determined not to meet her eye. As children they used to torment94 each other with “the look” at the Sunday lunches their parents gave for elderly relatives. These were awesome95 occasions worthy96 of the ancient silver service; the venerable great-uncles and -aunts and grandparents were Victorians, from their mother’s side of the family, a baffled and severe folk, a lost tribe who arrived at the house in black cloaks having wandered peevishly97 for two decades in an alien, frivolous98 century. They terrified the ten-year-old Cecilia and her twelve-year-old brother, and a giggling99 fit was always just a breath away. The one who caught the look was helpless, the one who bestowed100 it, immune. Mostly, the power was with Leon, whose look was mock-solemn, and consisted of drawing the corners of his mouth downward while rolling his eyes. He might ask Cecilia in the most innocent voice for the salt to be passed, and though she averted101 her gaze as she handed it to him, though she turned her head and inhaled102 deeply, it could be enough simply to know that he was doing his look to consign103 her to ninety minutes of quaking torture. Meanwhile, Leon would be free, needing only to top her up occasionally if he thought she was beginning to recover. Only rarely had she reduced him with an expression of haughty104 pouting105. Since the children were sometimes seated between adults, giving the look had its dangers—making faces at table could bring down disgrace and an early bedtime. The trick was to make the attempt while passing between, say, licking one’s lips and smiling broadly, and at the same time catch the other’s eye. On one occasion they had looked up and delivered their looks simultaneously106, causing Leon to spray soup from his nostrils107 onto the wrist of a great-aunt. Both children were banished108 to their rooms for the rest of the day.
Cecilia longed to take her brother aside and tell him that Mr. Marshall had pubic hair growing from his ears. He was describing the boardroom confrontation109 with the man who called him a warmonger. She half raised her arm as though to smooth her hair. Automatically, Leon’s attention was drawn110 by the motion, and in that instant she delivered the look he had not seen in more than ten years. He pursed his lips and turned away, and found something of interest to stare at near his shoe. As Marshall turned to Cecilia, Leon raised a cupped hand to shield his face, but could not disguise from his sister the tremor111 along his shoulders. Fortunately for him, Marshall was reaching his conclusion.
“ . . . where one can, as it were, catch one’s breath.”
Immediately, Leon was on his feet. He walked to the edge of the pool and contemplated a sodden112 red towel left near the diving board. Then he strolled back to them, hands in pockets, quite recovered.
He said to Cecilia, “Guess who we met on the way in.”
“Robbie.”
“I told him to join us tonight.”
“Leon! You didn’t!”
He was in a teasing mood. Revenge perhaps. He said to his friend, “So the cleaning lady’s son gets a scholarship to the local grammar, gets a scholarship to Cambridge, goes up the same time as Cee—and she hardly speaks to him in three years! She wouldn’t let him near her Roedean chums.”
“You should have asked me first.”
She was genuinely annoyed, and observing this, Marshall said placatingly113, “I knew some grammar school types at Oxford114 and some of them were damned clever. But they could be resentful, which was a bit rich, I thought.”
She said, “Have you got a cigarette?”
He offered her one from a silver case, threw one to Leon and took one for himself. They were all standing now, and as Cecilia leaned toward Marshall’s lighter115, Leon said, “He’s got a first-rate mind, so I don’t know what the hell he’s doing, messing about in the flower beds.”
She went to sit on the diving board and tried to give the appearance of relaxing, but her tone was strained. “He’s wondering about a medical degree. Leon, I wish you hadn’t asked him.”
“The Old Man’s said yes?”
She shrugged. “Look, I think you ought to go round to the bungalow116 now and ask him not to come.”
Leon had walked to the shallow end and stood facing her across the gently rocking sheet of oily blue water.
“How can I possibly do that?”
“I don’t care how you do it. Make an excuse.”
“Something’s happened between you.”
“No it hasn’t.”
“Is he bothering you?”
“For God’s sake!”
She got up irritably117 and walked away, toward the swimming pool pavilion, an open structure supported by three fluted118 pillars. She stood, leaning against the central pillar, smoking and watching her brother. Two minutes before, they had been in league and now they were at odds—childhood revisited indeed. Paul Marshall stood halfway119 between them, turning his head this way and that when they spoke, as though at a tennis match. He had a neutral, vaguely120 inquisitive121 air, and seemed untroubled by this sibling122 squabble. That at least, Cecilia thought, was in his favor.
Her brother said, “You think he can’t hold a knife and fork.”
“Leon, stop it. You had no business inviting123 him.”
“What rot!”
The silence that followed was partly mitigated124 by the drone of the filtration pump. There was nothing she could do, nothing she could make Leon do, and she suddenly felt the pointlessness of argument. She lolled against the warm stone, lazily finishing her cigarette and contemplating125 the scene before her—the foreshortened slab126 of chlorinated water, the black inner tube of a tractor tire propped127 against a deck chair, the two men in cream linen128 suits of infinitesimally different hues129, bluish-gray smoke rising against the bamboo green. It looked carved, fixed130, and again, she felt it: it had happened a long time ago, and all outcomes, on all scales—from the tiniest to the most colossal—were already in place. Whatever happened in the future, however superficially strange or shocking, would also have an unsurprising, familiar quality, inviting her to say, but only to herself, Oh yes, of course. That. I should have known.
She said lightly, “D’you know what I think?”
“What’s that?”
“We should go indoors, and you should mix us a fancy kind of drink.”
Paul Marshall banged his hands together and the sound ricocheted between the columns and the back wall of the pavilion. “There’s something I do rather well,” he called. “With crushed ice, rum and melted dark chocolate.”
The suggestion prompted an exchange of glances between Cecilia and her brother, and thus their discord131 was resolved. Leon was already moving away, and as Cecilia and Paul Marshall followed him and converged on the gap in the thicket she said, “I’d rather have something bitter. Or even sour.”
He smiled, and since he had reached the gap first, he paused to hand her through, as though it were a drawing room doorway132, and as she passed she felt him touch her lightly on her forearm.
Or it may have been a leaf.
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meandering
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| 蜿蜒的河流，漫步，聊天 | |
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glaze
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| v.因疲倦、疲劳等指眼睛变得呆滞，毫无表情 | |
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converging
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| adj.收敛[缩]的，会聚的，趋同的v.（线条、运动的物体等）会于一点( converge的现在分词 )；（趋于）相似或相同；人或车辆汇集；聚集 | |
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atlas
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| n.地图册，图表集 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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outraged
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| a.震惊的，义愤填膺的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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retrieve
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| vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索 | |
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trample
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| vt.踩，践踏；无视，伤害，侵犯 | |
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prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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tugging
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| n.牵引感v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的现在分词 ) | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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confide
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| v.向某人吐露秘密 | |
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soothing
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| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
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murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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frustrating
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| adj.产生挫折的，使人沮丧的，令人泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的现在分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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caresses
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| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
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neediness
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| n.穷困，贫穷 | |
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converged
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| v.（线条、运动的物体等）会于一点( converge的过去式 )；（趋于）相似或相同；人或车辆汇集；聚集 | |
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warping
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| n.翘面，扭曲，变形v.弄弯，变歪( warp的现在分词 )；使（行为等）不合情理，使乖戾， | |
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flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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recede
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| vi.退(去)，渐渐远去；向后倾斜，缩进 | |
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genre
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| n.(文学、艺术等的)类型，体裁，风格 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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fingerprint
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| n.指纹；vt.取...的指纹 | |
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desecration
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| n. 亵渎神圣, 污辱 | |
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ration
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| n.定量(pl.)给养，口粮；vt.定量供应 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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writhed
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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trespass
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| n./v.侵犯，闯入私人领地 | |
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grassy
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| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
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manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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45
exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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46
irritable
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| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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47
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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48
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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49
ironies
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| n.反语( irony的名词复数 )；冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事；嘲弄 | |
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50
deployed
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| （尤指军事行动）使展开( deploy的过去式和过去分词 )； 施展； 部署； 有效地利用 | |
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51
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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52
docile
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| adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的 | |
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53
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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54
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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55
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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56
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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57
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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58
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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59
nostalgia
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| n.怀乡病，留恋过去，怀旧 | |
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60
anodyne
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| n.解除痛苦的东西，止痛剂 | |
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61
nettles
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| n.荨麻( nettle的名词复数 ) | |
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62
checkered
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| adj.有方格图案的 | |
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63
tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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64
elongated
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| v.延长，加长( elongate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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65
constellation
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| n.星座n.灿烂的一群 | |
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66
garishness
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| n.鲜艳夺目，炫耀 | |
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67
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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68
posthumous
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| adj.遗腹的；父亡后出生的；死后的，身后的 | |
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69
retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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70
invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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71
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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72
thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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73
canes
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| n.（某些植物，如竹或甘蔗的）茎( cane的名词复数 )；（用于制作家具等的）竹竿；竹杖 | |
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74
pitcher
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| n.(有嘴和柄的)大水罐；(棒球)投手 | |
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75
monologue
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| n.长篇大论，（戏剧等中的）独白 | |
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76
tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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77
catastrophes
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| n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难 | |
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78
advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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79
bishops
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| （基督教某些教派管辖大教区的）主教( bishop的名词复数 )； （国际象棋的）象 | |
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80
quotas
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| （正式限定的）定量( quota的名词复数 )； 定额； 指标； 摊派 | |
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81
overtime
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| adj.超时的，加班的；adv.加班地 | |
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82
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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83
coaxed
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的过去式和过去分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱 | |
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84
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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85
warmonger
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| n.战争贩子，好战者，主战论者 | |
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86
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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87
maligned
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| vt.污蔑，诽谤（malign的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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88
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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89
twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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91
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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92
eyebrow
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| n.眉毛，眉 | |
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93
sprouted
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| v.发芽( sprout的过去式和过去分词 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出 | |
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94
torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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95
awesome
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| adj.令人惊叹的，难得吓人的，很好的 | |
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96
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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97
peevishly
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| adv．暴躁地 | |
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98
frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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99
giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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100
bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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101
averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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102
inhaled
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| v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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103
consign
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| vt.寄售（货品），托运，交托，委托 | |
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104
haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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105
pouting
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| v.撅（嘴）( pout的现在分词 ) | |
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106
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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107
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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108
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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109
confrontation
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| n.对抗，对峙，冲突 | |
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110
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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111
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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112
sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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113
placatingly
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114
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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115
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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116
bungalow
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| n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房 | |
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117
irritably
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| ad.易生气地 | |
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118
fluted
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| a.有凹槽的 | |
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119
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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120
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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121
inquisitive
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| adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的 | |
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122
sibling
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| n.同胞手足(指兄、弟、姐或妹) | |
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123
inviting
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| adj.诱人的，引人注目的 | |
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124
mitigated
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| v.减轻，缓和( mitigate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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125
contemplating
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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126
slab
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| n.平板，厚的切片；v.切成厚板，以平板盖上 | |
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127
propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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128
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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129
hues
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| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
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130
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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131
discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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132
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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