matter of chance

What this means is that evolution in E. coli, despite the serendipity of horizontal gene transfer, isn’t just a matter of chance.

"It was not a matter of chance he was attacked in the nightclub, it was not a flash of temper it was a planned act of retribution," Mr Duck said.

That she ended up being Mai was in part a matter of chance, or the appearance of such.

In any case, Coetzee reminds us, “Loreto has a life of her own, invisible to her employers, which may well be full of surprises. It may contain, for instance, Loreto’s equivalent of the Pole. … It is only a matter of chance that the story being told is not about Loreto and her man but about her, Beatriz, and her Polish admirer. Another fall of the dice and the story would be about Loreto’s submerged life.”

Dymytro Romanov, 42, lives in a neighboring high-rise and said it was a matter of chance that his building was unscathed.