Some ten years before, Miss Travers, then a young girl of nineteen, was suffering from partial deafness, and was recommended by her own doctor to go to Dr. Wilde, who was the chief oculist and aurist in Dublin.  Miss Travers went to Dr. Wilde, who treated her successfully.  Dr. Wilde would accept no fees from her, stating at the outset that as she was the daughter of a brother-physician, he thought it an honour to be of use to her.  Serjeant Armstrong assured his hearers that in spite of Miss Travers’ beauty he believed that at first Dr. Wilde took nothing but a benevolent interest in the girl.  Even when his professional services ceased to be necessary, Dr. Wilde continued his friendship.  He wrote Miss Travers innumerable letters:  he advised her as to her reading and sent her books and tickets for places of amusement:  he even insisted that she should be better dressed, and pressed money upon her to buy bonnets and clothes and frequently invited her to his house for dinners and parties.  The friendship went on in this sentimental kindly way for some five or six years till 1860.

The wily Serjeant knew enough about human nature to feel that it was necessary to discover some dramatic incident to change benevolent sympathy into passion, and he certainly found what he wanted.

Miss Travers, it appeared, had been burnt low down on her neck when a child:  the cicatrice could still be seen, though it was gradually disappearing.  When her ears were being examined by Dr. Wilde, it was customary for her to kneel on a hassock before him, and he thus discovered this burn on her neck.  After her hearing improved he still continued to examine the cicatrice from time to time, pretending to note the speed with which it was disappearing.  Some time in ’60 or ’61 Miss Travers had a corn on the sole of her foot which gave her some pain.  Dr. Wilde did her the honour of paring the corn with his own hands and painting it with iodine.  The cunning Serjeant could not help saying with some confusion, natural or assumed, “that it would have been just as well—­at least there are men of such temperament that it would be dangerous to have such a manipulation going on.”  The spectators in the court smiled, feeling that in “manipulation” the Serjeant had found the most neatly suggestive word.

Naturally at this point Serjeant Sullivan interfered in order to stem the rising tide of interest and to blunt the point of the accusation.  Sir William Wilde, he said, was not the man to shrink from any investigation:  but he was only in the case formally and he could not meet the allegations, which therefore were “one-sided and unfair” and so forth and so on.

After the necessary pause, Serjeant Armstrong plucked his wig straight and proceeded to read letters of Dr. Wilde to Miss Travers at this time, in which he tells her not to put too much iodine on her foot, but to rest it for a few days in a slipper and keep it in a horizontal position while reading a pleasant book.  If she would send in, he would try and send her one.