He declared that the whole thing was an accident.

She was a woman, and kept her own opinion.
Christine then turned her back to the glass and scanned the table and the candles, shining one at each corner like types of the four Evangelists, and thought they looked too assuming--too confident.

She glanced up at the clock, which stood also in this room, there not being space enough for it in the passage.

It was nearly seven, and she expected Nicholas at half-past.

She liked the company of this venerable article in her lonely life: its tickings and whizzings were a sort of conversation.