Travers was blackmailing Sir William and Lady Wilde.

The attack in the hands of Serjeant Armstrong was still more deadly and
convincing. He rose early on the Monday afternoon and declared at the beginning
that the case was so painful at the beginning that he would have preferred not
to have been engaged in it--a hypocritical statement which deceived no one, and
was just as conventional-false as his wig. But with this exception the story he
told was extraordinarily clear and gripping.

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: