ompany her guardian, her seducer, and her lover.
When she comes to see her guardian, the first person she meets is her
seducer, and she learns that her lover has just left the house. Up to
that moment, I repeat, she did not know that any one of these men knew
any other; yet she does not even say, "How small the world is!"[4]
Surely some such observation was obligatory under the circumstances.

Let us turn now to a more memorable piece of work; that interesting play
of Sir Arthur Pinero's transition period, _The Profligate_. Here the
great situation of the third act is brought about by a chain of
coincidences which would be utterly unthinkable in the author's maturer
work. Leslie Brudenell, the heroine, is the ward of Mr. Cheal, a
solicitor. She is to be married to Dunstan Renshaw; and, as she has no
home, the bridal party meets at Mr. 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. 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 con