He gave a wide-handed gesture, puzzled as to why she was at his flat and picking up from the way she clenched her mouth so tightly that she was very tense.

That she had all the abstracted and nervous manner of one who is on the eve of some bold and hazardous step, which it has required no common struggle to resolve upon, would have been obvious to the lynx-eyed Fagin […]

Jan 30, 2018, Byker, “Dindu nuffins compilation”, in alt.california, Usenet, retrieved 2022-07-23:

She has had a persistent cough for weeks.