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 over-statement; you shall therefore, gentlemen of the jury, hear from Miss Travers herself what took place between her and Dr.Wilde and what she complains of." Miss Travers then went into the witness-box.

Though thin and past her first youth, she was still pretty in a conventional way, with regular features and dark eyes.

She was examined by Mr.Butt, Q.C.