But was there a seduction?  The girl asserted that there was guilty intimacy, and Sir William Wilde had not contradicted her.  It was said that he was only formally a defendant; but he was the real defendant and he could have gone into the box if he had liked and given his version of what took place and contradicted Miss Travers in whole or in part.

“It is for you, gentlemen of the jury, to draw your own conclusions from his omission to do what one would have thought would be an honourable man’s first impulse and duty.”

Finally it was for the jury to consider whether the letter was a libel and if so what the amount of damages should be.

His Lordship recalled the jury at Mr. Butt’s request to say that in assessing damages they might also take into consideration the fact that the defence was practically a justification of the libel.  The fair-mindedness of the judge was conspicuous from first to last, and was worthy of the high traditions of the Irish Bench.

After deliberating for a couple of hours the jury brought in a verdict which had a certain humour in it.  They awarded to Miss Travers a farthing damages and intimated that the farthing should carry costs.  In other words they rated Miss Travers’ virtue at the very lowest coin of the realm, while insisting that Sir William Wilde should pay a couple of thousands of pounds in costs for having seduced her.

It was generally felt that the verdict did substantial justice; though the jury, led away by patriotic sympathy with Lady Wilde, the true “Speranza,” had been a little hard on Miss Travers.  No one doubted that Sir William Wilde had seduced his patient.  He had, it appeared, an unholy reputation, and the girl’s admission that he had accused her of being “unnaturally passionless” was accepted as the true key of the enigma.  This was why he had drawn away from the girl, after seducing her.  And it was not unnatural under the circumstances that she should become vindictive and revengeful.

Such inferences as these, I drew from the comments of the Irish papers at the time; but naturally I wished if possible to hear some trustworthy contemporary on the matter.  Fortunately such testimony was forthcoming.

A Fellow of Trinity, who was then a young man, embodied the best opinion of the time in an excellent pithy letter.  He wrote to me that the trial simply established, what every one believed, that “Sir William Wilde was a pithecoid person of extraordinary sensuality and cowardice (funking the witness-box left him without a defender!) and that his wife was a highfalutin’ pretentious creature whose pride was as extravagant as her reputation founded on second-rate verse-making....  Even when a young woman she used to keep her rooms in Merrion Square in semi-darkness; she laid the paint on too thick for any ordinary light, and she gave herself besides all manner of airs.”