Cheal's office before proceeding to
the registrar's. No sooner have they departed than Janet Preece, who has
been betrayed and deserted by Dunstan Renshaw (under an assumed name)
comes to the office to state her piteous case. This is not in itself a
pure coincidence; for Janet happened to come to London in the same train
with Leslie Brudenell and her brother Wilfrid; and Wilfrid, seeing in
her a damsel in distress, recommended her to lay her troubles before a
respectable solicitor, giving her Mr. Cheal's address. So far, then, the
coincidence is not startling. It is natural enough that Renshaw's
mistress and his betrothed should live in the same country town; and it
is not improbable that they should come to London by the same train, and
that Wilfrid Brudenell should give the bewildered and weeping young
woman a commonplace piece of advice. The concatenation of circumstances
is remarkable rather than improbable. But when, in the next act, not a
month later, Janet Preece, by pure chance, drops in at the Florentine
villa where Renshaw and Leslie are spending their honeymoon, we feel
that the long arm of coincidence is stretched to its uttermost, and that
even the thrilling situation which follows is very dearly bought.
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