If
one were bound to raise an objection, it would be to the coincidence
which brings to Cayley's knowledge, on one and the same evening, two
such exactly similar misalliances in his own circle of acquaintance. But
these are just the coincidences that do constantly happen. Every one
knows that life is full of them.
The exposition might, no doubt, have been more economically effected.
Cayley Drummle might have figured as sole confidant and chorus; or even
he might have been dispensed with, and all that was necessary might have
appeared in colloquies between Aubrey and Paula on the one hand, Aubrey
and Ellean on the other. But Cayley as sole confidant--the "Charles, his
friend," of eighteenth-century comedy--would have been more plainly
conventional than Cayley as one of a trio of Aubrey's old cronies,
representing the society he is sacrificing in entering upon this
experimental marriage; and to have conveyed the necessary information
without any confidant or chorus at all would (one fancies) have strained
probability, or, still worse, impaired consistency of character.
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