Sentence:  But Richmond ... appeared to lose himself in his own reflections. Some pickled crab, which he had not touched, had been removed with a damson pie; and his sister saw, peeping around the massive silver epergne that almost obscured him from her <WSD>view</WSD>, that he had eaten no more than a spoonful of that either. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  The act of seeing or looking at something.