Every disturbance of the silence which rose to the dignity of a noise could be heard for miles, and the merest sound for a long distance.

So she remained, thinking of Stephen, and wishing he had not deprived her of his company to no purpose, as it appeared.

How delicate and sensitive he was, she reflected; and yet he was man enough to have a private mystery, which considerably elevated him in her eyes.

Thus, looking at things with an inward vision, she lost consciousness of the flight of time.
Strange conjunctions of circumstances, particularly those of a trivial everyday kind, are so frequent in an ordinary life, that we grow used to their unaccountableness, and forget the question whether the very long odds against such juxtaposition is not almost a disproof of it being a matter of chance at all.

What occurred to Elfride at this moment was a case in point.