lest anyone see them

[JEic]

I read these sentences from https://www.translateen.com/sentence/lest-in-sentence-examples/

(a) She turned away from the window lest anyone see them.
(b) I was self-conscious about my body to a painful degree, and terrified lest the weight came back.
(c) I fear lest we commit an inexcusable blunder.

I always thought that 'lest' is followed by the base form of a verb. So, (a) and (c) look fine to me.

When I read (b), I didn't understand why 'came', a past tense is used. Is it correct?

Also, for sentence (c), if I change 'we' to 'she', then should 'commit' be changed to 'commits'?
- I fear lest she commits an inexcusable blunder.

Subjunctive is confusing.

 

[Tarheel]

The first one would make more sense to me as: "She turned away from the window lest anyone see her." (I would rewrite the others also.)

I believe "lest" is mostly literary.

I guess you have to learn it for a test, huh?

Others will chime in soon.

(I'm going to have my coffee now.)