Jason Lee
New member
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2024
- Member Type
- Interested in Language
- Native Language
- Korean
- Home Country
- South Korea
- Current Location
- South Korea
It is by Edith Wharton's short story 'Afterward'.
The context of the phrase is as below:
It leaped out at her suddenly, like a grin out of the dark, that they had often called England so little --"such a confoundedly hard place to get lost in."
A confoundedly hard place to get lost in! That had been her husband's phrase. And now, with the whole machinery of official investigation sweeping its flash-lights from shore to shore, and across the dividing straits; now, with Boyne's name blazing from the walls of every town and village, his portrait (how that wrung her!) hawked up and down the country like the image of a hunted criminal; now the little compact, populous island, so policed, surveyed, and administered, revealed itself as a Sphinx-like guardian of abysmal mysteries, staring back into his wife's anguished eyes as if with the malicious joy of knowing something they would never know!
It might mean 'all of sudden' or 'out of blue', but I am not sure.
The couple above is from America, living in England, and the husband is missing, nowhere to be found.
The context of the phrase is as below:
It leaped out at her suddenly, like a grin out of the dark, that they had often called England so little --"such a confoundedly hard place to get lost in."
A confoundedly hard place to get lost in! That had been her husband's phrase. And now, with the whole machinery of official investigation sweeping its flash-lights from shore to shore, and across the dividing straits; now, with Boyne's name blazing from the walls of every town and village, his portrait (how that wrung her!) hawked up and down the country like the image of a hunted criminal; now the little compact, populous island, so policed, surveyed, and administered, revealed itself as a Sphinx-like guardian of abysmal mysteries, staring back into his wife's anguished eyes as if with the malicious joy of knowing something they would never know!
It might mean 'all of sudden' or 'out of blue', but I am not sure.
The couple above is from America, living in England, and the husband is missing, nowhere to be found.
