Great Expectations

I had told Wemmick of his showing us her wrists, that day of the dinner

party.

"Well, sir!" Wemmick went on; "it happened--happened, don't you

see?--that this woman was so very artfully dressed from the time of

her apprehension, that she looked much slighter than she really was; in

particular, her sleeves are always remembered to have been so skilfully

contrived that her arms had quite a delicate look. She had only a bruise

or two about her,--nothing for a tramp,--but the backs of her hands

were lacerated, and the question was, Was it with finger-nails? Now, Mr.

Jaggers showed that she had struggled through a great lot of brambles

which were not as high as her face; but which she could not have got

through and kept her hands out of; and bits of those brambles were

actually found in her skin and put in evidence, as well as the fact that

the brambles in question were found on examination to have been broken

through, and to have little shreds of her dress and little spots of

blood upon them here and there. But the boldest point he made was this:

it was attempted to be set up, in proof of her jealousy, that she was

under strong suspicion of having, at about the time of the murder,

frantically destroyed her child by this man--some three years old--to

revenge herself upon him. Mr. Jaggers worked that in this way: "We say

these are not marks of finger-nails, but marks of brambles, and we show

you the brambles. You say they are marks of finger-nails, and you set

up the hypothesis that she destroyed her child. You must accept all

consequences of that hypothesis. For anything we know, she may have

destroyed her child, and the child in clinging to her may have scratched

her hands. What then? You are not trying her for the murder of her

child; why don't you? As to this case, if you will have scratches,

we say that, for anything we know, you may have accounted for them,

assuming for the sake of argument that you have not invented them?" To

sum up, sir," said Wemmick, "Mr. Jaggers was altogether too many for the

jury, and they gave in."

"Has she been in his service ever since?"

"Yes; but not only that," said Wemmick, "she went into his service

immediately after her acquittal, tamed as she is now. She has since been

taught one thing and another in the way of her duties, but she was tamed

from the beginning."