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.

"I have now," concluded the Serjeant, like an actor carefully preparing
his effect, "traced this friendly intimacy down to a point where it begins
to be dangerous: I do not wish to aggravate the gravity of the charge in the
slightest by any rhetoric or by an unconscious overstatement; you shall
therefore, gentlemen of the jury, hear from Miss Travers herself what took