It has been suggested, as throwing doubt upon Miss Smithers' story, that the existence of an engagement to marry, between her and the plaintiff, may have prompted her to concoct a monstrous fraud for his benefit; and this is suggested although at the time of the execution of the tattooing no such engagement did, as a matter of fact, exist, or was within measurable distance of the parties.
It did not exist, said the Attorney-General; but the disposing mind existed: in other words, that she was then 'in love'-- if, notwithstanding Mr.Attorney's difficulty in defining it, I may use the term with the plaintiff.

This may or may not have been the case.

There are some things which it is quite beyond the power of any Judge or Jury to decide, and one of them certainly is--at what exact period of her acquaintance with a future husband a young lady's regard turns into a warmer feeling?
But supposing that the Attorney-General is right, and that although she at that moment clearly had no prospect of marrying him, since she had left England to seek her fortune at the Antipodes, the plaintiff was looked upon by this lady with that kind of regard which is supposed to precede the matrimonial contract, the circumstance, in my mind, tells rather in his favour than against him.

For in passing I may remark that this young lady has done a thing which is, in its way, little short of heroic; the more so because it has a ludicrous side.

She has submitted to an operation which must not only have been painful, but which is and always will be a blot upon her beauty.