When she came to herself she found Dr. Wilde frantically imploring her to come to her senses, while dabbing water on her face, and offering her wine to drink.

“If you don’t drink,” he cried, “I’ll pour it over you.”

For some time, she said, she scarcely realized where she was or what had occurred, though she heard him talking.  But gradually consciousness came back to her, and though she would not open her eyes she understood what he was saying.  He talked frantically: 

“Do be reasonable, and all will be right....  I am in your power ... spare me, oh, spare me ... strike me if you like.  I wish to God I 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; it might have been the 15th or the 16th:  it was Friday the 14th, she thought....  It was a great event to her; the most awful event in her whole life; yet she could not remember the day for certain.