could hate you, but I can't. I swore I would never touch your hand
again. Attend to me and do what I tell you. Have faith and confidence
in me and you may remedy the past and go to Australia. Think of the
talk this may give rise to. Keep up appearances for your own sake...."
He then took her up-stairs to a bedroom and made her drink some wine
and lie down for some time. She afterwards left the house; she hardly
knew how; he accompanied her to the door, she thought; but could not
be certain; she was half dazed.
The judge here interposed with the crucial question:
"Did you know that you had been violated?"
The audience waited breathlessly; after a short pause Miss Travers
replied:
"Yes."
Then it was true, the worst was true. The audience, excited to the
highest pitch, caught breath with malevolent delight. But the thrills
were not exhausted. Miss Travers next told how in Dr. Wilde's study
one evening she had been vexed at some slight, and at once took four
pennyworth of laudanum which she had bought. Dr. Wilde hurried her
round to the house of Dr. Walsh, a physician in the neighbourhood, who
gave her an antidote. Dr. Wilde was dreadfully frightened lest
something should get out....
She admitted at once that she had sometimes asked Dr. Wilde for money:
she thought nothing of it as she had again and again repaid him the
monies which he had lent her.
Miss Travers' examination in chief had been intensely interesting. The
fashionable ladies had heard all they had hoped to hear, and it was
noticed that they were not so eager to get seats in the court from
this time on, though the room was still crowded.
The cross-examination of Miss Travers was at least as interesting to
the student of human nature as the examination in chief had been, for
in her story of what took place on that 14th of October, weaknesses
and discrepancies of memory were discovered and at length
improbabilities and contradictions in the narrative itself.
First of all it was elicited that she could not be certain of the day;
|