Language - it conceals and reveals the truth ...

What does Catherine actually tell us when she compares Sir Robert to a "whore"?

He's an avaricious, a conniving and unfeeling man. We've bought his services for the moment. We've bought him like a cheap three-penny whore- (Catherine, speaking to her father; quote from the screenplay)

By comparing Morton to a whore she wants to say that he is corrupt and unfeeling and that his heart isn't in it. But that's only half of the truth. Obviously nevertheless she can't help feeling strongly attracted to him. It must be for some reason that she uses such a sexually charged vocabulary to describe him.

The movie subtext has already told us that Catherine is not as indifferent to the charms of Sir Robert as she pretends to be: When she is about to eat an apple in the Ladies Gallery of the House of Commons, she is watching him - or rather devouring him with her eyes instead of eating her apple.

By the way, it's great fun that she compares him to a "cheap, three-penny whore", because actually he is not cheap at all. :-)

CATHERINE: I'm afraid I have a confession and an apology to make to you, Sir Robert.

SIR ROBERT: Dear lady, I'm sure the one is rash and the other is superfluous. I would far rather hear neither.

So what's going on here? Catherine wants to confess that she misjudged his attitude in the case and wants to apologize for having been rude to him.

He wants to stop what he probably perceives as emotional outpoorings and assures her that an apology is superfluous and a confession would be - rash! So what kind of confession is he talking (and thinking) of? By refusing a confession that she doesn't even think of he reveals what kind of confession he is actually longing for.

(By the way, this scene shows how subtle and exact the acting is: If you watch this scene carefully you can see that Sir Robert swallows, his Adam's apple moves up and down. Obviously he is not at all indifferent to Catherine's announcement of a confession.)

When Catherine asks Sir Robert about the sacrifice he made for the case, he appeals urgently to her never to divulge it and to forget it herself:

CATHERINE: I shall never divulge it. I'm afraid I cannot promise to forget it myself.

SIR ROBERT: Very well if you choose to endow an unimportant incident with a romantic significance, you are perfectly at liberty to do so.

So what's going on?

Catherine takes his words literally, smiles and says no more than that it is impossible to control our own memories.

Sir Robert interprets her words in a different way. Although Catherine probably didn't think of anything romantic, Sir Robert says that she is perfectly at liberty to endow his sacrifice with a romantic significane - which means that he doesn't want her to endow it with a romantic significance - which actually means that by by denying a romantic significance and desperately trying to conceal the truth he reveals that indeed there is a romantic significance. Language is fascinating, isn't it? :-)

By the way, the fact that this brilliant lawyer makes such silly mistakes shows that in his second “Winslow case” cold, clear logic has already left him. This is the kind of mistake that his "victims" use to make when they are cross-examined by him and he coaxes them into tying themselves into knots.