red-set

Updated: May 4, 2025

Nor yet for spring; a couchant leopard has posed itself with horrid intent; murder glitters in its fixed golden eye, quivers in the tense loins, creeps in the tawny glitter of the skin, clutches the keen claws, that recoil, and grasp, and recoil again from the velvet ball of that heavy foot; murder grins in the withdrawn lip, the white, red-set teeth, the slavering crunch of the jaw: but nothing of all these fired the quiet and the silence of the crouching Sphinx; nerve and muscle in tranquil strength lay relaxed, though not unconscious.

Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 32, June, 1860