It
would not have been difficult to attenuate the coincidence. What has
actually happened is this: Janet has (we know not how) become a sort of
maid-companion to a Mrs. Stonehay, whose daughter was a school-friend of
Leslie's; the Stonehays have come to Florence, knowing nothing of
Leslie's presence there; and they happen to visit the villa in order to
see a fresco which it contains. If, now, we had been told that Janet's
engagement by the Stonehays had resulted from her visit to Mr. Cheal,
and that the Stonehays had come to Florence knowing Leslie to be there,
and eager to find her, several links would have been struck off the
chain of coincidence; or, to put it more exactly, a fairly coherent
sequence of events would have been substituted for a series of
incoherent chances. The same result might no doubt have been achieved in
many other and neater ways. I merely indicate, by way of illustration, a
quite obvious method of reducing the element of coincidence in the case.
The coincidence in _The Second Mrs.
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