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