Miss  High-heels



The story of a rich but girlish young gentleman under the control of
his pretty step-sister and her aunt:  written by himself at his
step-sister's order, with an account of his punishments, the dresses he
was made to wear, his final subjection and his curious fate.

                              ************


Chapter One



Dressed as a young lady for my step-sister's dinner-party.  Phoebe's
glac - kid long gloves.  My parentage and boyhood.  I am left under the
guardianship of a girl.  How "Dennis" was transformed into "Miss
Denise."

                              ************

Phoebe the maid, though she was as big and strong as a grenadier, had
the deft, neat hands of a French woman.  She threaded a pink satin
ribbon amongst the shining curls of my coiffure, buttoned the last
button of my very long glac-kid evening gloves, and dusted lightly with
a powder-puff my white bosom and shoulders.  Then she tucked a tiny
lace handkerchief in my corsage and said:

"There, now you are ready, Miss Denise.  Stand up!"

" Miss Denise indeed!" and "Stand up!" The insolence of it!  I remained
seated.

"Ah!" said Phoebe with a malicious smile, 49 you don't like being
ordered about by poor servants, do you?  You are the young master of
Beaumanoir, the wealthy aristocrat, the great landlord, Dennis Evelyn
Beryl," and she uttered my name with amused contempt.

"Bah!  - I do not trouble my head about your position-you are in your
own house-it is true, but you are under the control of your beautiful
step-sister who very properly stripped you of your foolish trousers two
years ago to punish you for your impertinence.  You are over eighteen
years old - I admit it, but for two years you have been mincing in
petticoats in a girls' school.  You are a young gentleman, are you?
Nobody would believe it.  You hair reaches clown below your waist.  You
have the figure, the face, the soft limbs, the hands and feet and the
breasts of a girl." I was dreadfully ashamed at Phoebe's outburst.  I
could not deny a word of it.

"You are a very important person, I suppose," she went on jeering at
me, " with a great career in Parliament!  Heavens how you used to
plague my ears with your boastfulness!  It may all be true.  What I am
concerned with is that you should he beautifully dressed for the
dinner-party which your step-sister Miss Deverel is giving on her
twenty-third birthday.  Stand up at once, or I will lace you into a
corset one inch tighter than the one you are wearing now."

"Oh Phoebe," I cried, "I can hardly breathe in this one."

I was alarmed.  Her tone was so menacing.  She was much stronger than I
was.  She could carry out her threat if she chose.  I stood up.  I had
a special reason for being obedient to-night.

"That's better, Miss Denise," she said.

I was dressed in an exquisite decollet frock of white transparent
chiffon glittering with silver embroideries over an underdress of soft
white satin.  The corsage was cut very low, the sleeves being merely
shoulder straps of flashing silver bugles, and my tight unwrinkled
white kid gloves reached up to my shoulders.  A sash of white satin
encircled my small waist and was tied in an enormous bow looped through
a huge diamond buckle on my left hip, whence the broad streamers
fringed with silver floated down to my feet.  A bunch of pink roses was
pinned on the right of my corsage at the waist.  The sheath skirt
molded my legs in its gleaming satin and chiffon, outlining the girlish
curves of my figure and was caught tightly in at the ankles by a scarf
of tulle passed through a big sparkling diamond buckle in front of the
dress and tied in a great bow behind.  My legs were quite bound by
these dainty fetters of satin and tulle.  The skirt was hemmed with
tulle and was bordered with a festoon of tiny pink roses, and on the
left side a row of flat diamond buttons sparkled up to the knee.  The
skirt had a long train of white satin, lined with pleats of tulle which
rustled deliciously at each movement.  Phoebe arranged the train in a
gleaming swirl about my feet, and stood up.

" Now Miss Denise, those smartly-gloved hands behind your back!"

" Behind my back!  Like a child!"

" Don't argue.  Behind your back with them at once, palm to palm, the
fingers pointing down."

I obeyed.  How humiliating it was!

Now lift up this pretty face.

She took my chin and tilted back my head.

"I must say, Miss Denise, your governesses have done wonders for you at
your school.  You always were a pretty girl of course, but you are
quite lovely now."

I blushed - was it altogether from shame, or was there not some thrill
of pleasure and of girlish vanity in the blush?  Oh my two years at a
girls' school had left their influence upon my disposition.

"Now put the high heels of your satin slippers together under your
frock."

She looked down to the billowy satin and tulle of my skirt.

"Have you done it?  Are the toes daintily turned out?"

"Yes Phoebe."

"I'll make sure."

She stooped and thrusting her hand under my dress, felt my feet.  The
blushes deepened on my face, and let me be frank - a soft wave of
voluptuous delight swept over me.  I am to write the truth here, at the
order of my guardian and step-sister Helen Deverel, and she knows me so
well that I could not hope to deceive her.  Therefore I am frank about
it.  The thought that here was I dressed with all the dainty luxury of
a very fashionable girl, standing obediently with my hands behind me at
the bidding of a maid, while she adjusted my satin-slippered feet in
the attitude of a school-girl troubled my passions.  There was
something sensuously bizarre in the contrast which fascinated me.
Besides, apart from the queer mental impression produced in me, the
actual touch of Phoebe's hands on my insteps and ankles gave me a
delicious physical sensation.  For she was wearing long white glac-kid
gloves.  I asked her why, and she glanced at me shrewdly.

"Miss Priscilla's orders," she answered, "No one is to touch you, or
dress you without long glac-kid gloves on their hands.  But why do you
ask, Miss Denise?"

I was confused.

"Did the feel of the gloves on your silk stockings please you?  Answer
at once."

"Yes Phoebe," I replied shyly.

Phoebe nodded her head.

"Miss Priscilla is a very wise lady.  Now stand without moving until
she comes to inspect you."

Miss Priscilla, then, that old maid whom I had once been fool enough to
despise, had foreseen that the touch of the kid-gloves would make its
sensuous appeal to me.  She had deliberately intended that it should.
Why?  My old fear returned to me - a fear that she and Helen Deverel
her niece were in a plot together to nullify me, to make me of no
importance, perhaps by some enervating system to reduce me to perpetual
subjection.  If so I had reason to shiver; they were so clever, they
had shown such insight into my character and failings.  On the other
hand there was the promise of Helen Deverel given to me in the most
emphatic way two years ago that the day after I returned from the
girls' school I should be allowed to resume the dress of my sex, if the
head schoolmistress sent me home with a good report.  Well I had
returned this afternoon with an excellent report.  Tonight I was to be
Miss Denise Beryl, a cousin of Evelyn's.  But tomorrow I was to resume
my liberty.  I was to be once more the master of Beaumanoir.

I was turning over these doubts in my mind when Phoebe interrupted my
reflections.

"You have moved your feet, Miss Denise, she said sternly.  "In that
tight pretty satin frock, every tremor of your limbs is visible."

"I wasn't thinking Phoebe," I said humbly, "I am sorry.

Phoebe was appeased by the humility of my voice.

"I will forgive you this once," she said.  "There's no doubt Miss
Denise that you ought to be kept in girls' clothes all your life."

"All my life I" I exclaimed horrified.

"You are so much easier to manage," she replied.  What a selfish
argument!  All she thought of was her comfort, not one consideration
did she give to me, my position, the career which awaited me.  No!  As
a youth, I should give her orders.  Under discipline and dressed as a
girl I received them from her.  That was all she cared about.

I was careful not to move again, and Phoebe busied herself in putting
away the school-girl's dress which I had laid aside to appear as a
grown up young lady in a decollet gown with a long train.

While I am waiting thus for Miss Priscilla, let me explain briefly the
circumstances which brought about my present position.

My father, who was probably the wealthiest commoner in England, had
inherited the great estate of Beaumanoir in Hampshire, a house in Park
Lane and a large fortune in the Funds, which by skilful business he had
greatly increased.  He married late in fife and I, his only child, was
born when he was fifty-two.  I was baptized Dennis Evelyn, and the
second name, which is given to girls as well as to boys, I always
resented.  I resented it all the more, because in complexion, features,
limbs, and figure I was, alas!  As the taunts of my school friends
assured me, more like a girl than a boy.  My father lost his wife when
I was twelve and a year later married a second time whence came all my
troubles.  He married a middle-aged widow Mrs.  Deverel, who bad a
daughter Helen, a girl just four years older than myself.  She was a
beautiful girl with dark hair, a pale sweet face and a slim figure.
She had the most winning manners and at once set herself to charm
everybody.  She succeeded with everybody except me.

I resented my father's marriage, and the intrusion of these new people
into our house.  I would not call the new Mrs.  Beryl, "mother," nor
Helen "sister." Mrs.  Beryl was considerate and Helen laid herself out
to please me, but I distrusted them both.  I always had a fear that
they meant to take my place in my father's affections and oust me from
my inheritance.

I remember particularly one day when I was home for the holidays.  I
was thirteen at the time, Helen seventeen; she stopped me as I went out
of the drawing-room, and as she came in, she laid her little hand upon
my arm and said wistfully:

"Evelyn, can't we be good friends ?  I am so unhappy that you dislike
me.  "

The name Evelyn irritated me.  I looked at her ironically and replied

"I suppose that you really want to marry me, to get hold of my fortune,
don't you?"

It was a foolish answer.  If it had not been uttered I might not be
standing now in the fashionable ball-dress of a wealthy young lady,
waiting the moment when I should take my place at her birthday dinner
party, a living tribute to her domination from the Louis Quinze heels
of my smart satin-slippers to the pink ribbon in my curls.  For to that
foolish answer I attribute the beginnings of her hatred and resentment.
She turned away deeply wounded and never made advances to me again.

That same year in the autumn my step-mother died and the shock of her
death prostrated my father.  He was then sixty-five.  He had a great
affection for Helen and a great faith in her capacity; and at her
suggestion, Miss Priscilla Deverel, an Aunt of hers, was introduced
into the household to act as companion to Helen and to assist her in
the management of the house.  Miss Priscilla was really a remarkable
woman.  She was a fully qualified doctor and had amongst lady-doctors a
great medical reputation.  She gave up her practice to join us.  But to
me at this time she seemed merely a harmless, slightly ridiculous old
maid.  She was forty-seven or so when she came to Beaumanoir, a
wrinkled thin ungainly woman, who dressed very badly, was very patient
and submissive, and whom I treated with the utmost disregard.  I did
not resent her presence in the house, as I did Helen's.  For I looked
upon her as of no importance whatever.  The first time I had any doubt
about her was a year later when I was ill with a cold:  I was then
between fourteen and fifteen, and Helen brought her to my bedroom.  At
first I would not allow her to examine my chest, but Helen threatened
to tell my father of my refusal and to send for a doctor from London.
That for a special reason I dreaded.  I let Miss Priscilla open my
night-gown and I saw at once - for my pride was on the look-out - a
flash of wonder on her face.  I flushed scarlet.  I had a secret which
I had always tried to conceal.  My bosom was much too developed for a
boy's and developing as I grew.  I had not merely the nipples of a boy,
but the white globes of a girl's breasts threatened to become
prominent.  Miss Priscilla examined them carefully.  Then she turned to
Helen and exchanged with her a significant look.  When she looked again
at me a slow smile of triumph was spreading over her face.  It seemed
to say:  "I have got you," and when she went out of the room I thought
with some discomfort of the impertinences which I had showered upon
her.  However, I soon took courage.  She could do me no harm, I
thought.  What a fool I was!

The next term an episode occurred of which it is difficult for me to
write.  But I must refer to it, because it affected my future
tremendously.  I was, as I have confessed, girlish to look at although
I took my part in the games of the school and my appearance brought
upon me a great deal of chaff and ridicule.  It also brought upon me
the attentions of the bigger boys in the Sixth Form.  One of them, a
youth of nineteen called Guy Repton, pestered me.  One afternoon I
struck him, and gave him a black eye.  He attacked me, a master caught
us struggling.  Guy Repton was expelled in disgrace, and my father was
asked to take me away.  The head master wrote to my father as follows:

"Dennis is not to blame for the scandal at all, but he looks so much
like a pretty girl that I think him unsuited for a boys' school."

Accordingly I returned home, and nobody knew what to do with me.  I
could not go to another school.  I was too young for the University.  I
stayed at home for six months.  My father was already sickening with
his last illness.  There was no one to control me; and no doubt I
bullied the servants, was tyrannical and threatening to the tenants,
was rude to Helen and contemptuous of Miss Priscilla.  Miss Priscilla
bad precise old-maidish neatnesses which it was a pleasure to me to
offend.  To stamp about the drawing-room in noisy muddy boots, to fling
myself on delicately upholstered sofas in dirty football clothes -
these things I delighted to do because I saw how much they shocked her
and offended Helen.  Finally Helen made a suggestion to my father that
I should be sent round the world with a tutor for a year.  My father
was delighted with the idea.  He was very ambitious for me.

"There is no reason, my boy, why you should make money.  I have done
that.  You must make a famous name.  Marry and begin a great family
which shall be associated the history of the country."

Oh, how well I remember him saying that!  Helen and Miss Priscilla were
both at his bedside at the time, and both looking at me with a quizzing
enigmatical smile which I did not understand.

" You must go into Parliament, become a Cabinet Minister, perhaps Prime
Minister.  Therefore go round the world Dennis and improve your mind."

I went, grateful to Helen, but after I had started I began to wonder
whether Helen had not some ulterior purpose.  Whether she had not
removed me from my father's neighbourhood in order to oust me by
slanders from his affections and rob me of my inheritance.  I wrote to
him therefore warning him against Helen and Miss Priscilla.

" They are both of them designing women, I am sure.  They wish to
intrigue me out of my proper position as your son."

It was an unfortunate letter, for it came into Helen's hands
ultimately.  But at the same time it had its influence on my father.
For a couple of months later, I received a telegram announcing my
father's death and that he had bequeathed the whole of his immense
fortune to me, with a request that I should make Helen such an
allowance as I thought sufficient for her and Miss Priscilla.  There
was however a thorn in that as in every rose.  I was not to come into
my inheritance until I was twenty-five, and until that time Helen was
appointed my guardian.  I resented extremely the idea of being subject
to Helen who certainly disliked me and at this time was only twenty
years old herself.  However I reflected that I had the whip hand of
her.  For she would be absolutely dependant upon me and my money for
her meals.  I returned to London where I found a letter from Helen
asking me to go and see Mr.  Willowes the solicitor.  Now Mr.  Willowes
was a friend of Helen's and she had removed the entire affairs of the
family from our old solicitor, who had looked after them for twenty
years, into this new man's hands.  I went to see him in a haughty mood
of displeasure.

"I don't approve of the change," I said foolishly, "and I shall restore
the business into the hands of our old solicitor when I come of age."

Mr.  Willowes, a young sardonic looking man, twirled his moustache with
an ironical smile.

"It is very kind of you to give me warning.  Meanwhile here is your
first-class railway ticket to Beaumanoir.  I have paid off your tutor.
Miss Deverel expects you this afternoon and if you will take a word of
advice, young gentleman, you will change your tone with her.  You are
sixteen and a half.  She has complete control of you for the next eight
years and I rather think that she has had enough of your ill-manners.
Good morning."

Wild with rage I was shown out of the office.  I had hardly any money.
I had to go down to Beaumanoir, and at once Helen threw off the mask.
I arrived late, and I noticed that all the footmen and men-servants had
been dismissed.  There were only the women now and new women-servants
in addition, all big and handsome and strong.

"You have just time to dress for dinner," said Phoebe, "if you will
hurry."

"I shall be late," I replied.  "How is it that there are no valets?"

"You must ask Miss Helen."

I had my bath and coming back into my bedroom I found Phoebe still
there.

"What are you doing here?  You can go," I said and I saw to my surprise
that she was holding up a dainty corset of white satin.

"I must lace you into this first Master Evelyn," she said impudently.

"How dare you?  What impertinence!" I began and I saw her move to the
bell.  "What are you going to do?" I cried.

"Ring the bell for some of the other servants if you are going to be
silly.  I have definite orders from Miss Helen to lace you into a
corset and smarten you up."

I remembered with a sinking heart Mr.  Willowes' advice.  I couldn't
have a struggle with a lot of women-servants.  It was a question I must
settle privately with Helen.  A minutes conversation would settle the
matter and put a stop to the repetition of any such nonsense.  I
allowed Phoebe to lace me up in a woman's corset.  What a strange
luxurious sensation it was!  An enervating, captivating sensation
against which I felt the need to struggle.  I had a feeling now of
being really in a woman's power.  The delicate thing, all lace and
satin outside, but relentless as steel in its grip, seemed to me an
epitome and a symbol of women.  The rest of this story will show that
my intuition was correct.  My hair I had carelessly allowed to grow
long.  Phoebe curled it.  I noticed that my new dress trousers had a
line of little effeminate black satin buttons running for a few inches
from the hem upwards on the outside of each leg.  They were short too
and exposed my ankles which were clad in very fine black silk stockings
fixed up to my corset instead of in socks and my shoes were
patent-leather girls' pumps with neat flat bows and the straight
American heels, higher of course than those which men wear.  But I
thought I could easily hide these.  Helen was already at table when I
went down with five or six of her friends, Mr.  and Mrs.  Kivers, old
General Carstairs, a regular degenerate and some others.

"Ah here's the androgyne!" Helen cried as I entered the room.  "Come
and sit down!  How do you like your corset and your bright little
shoes?"

The company tried not to laugh.  I was so confused that I wished the
floor would open and swallow me up.  I ate my dinner not knowing where
to look.

"We have just been discussing your future, Evelyn dear," said Helen.

" I prefer not to discuss my future with acquaintances," I replied
haughtily.

" There's no reason why you should," said Helen, "for we have settled
it with a unanimous vote.  You are too young still for College.  For
reasons of which you are aware, you cannot be safely sent to a boys'
school.

I grew scarlet.

"And you are too overbearing and untidy and impossible to remain at
home with a tutor.  There is only one thing left for you, dear, and
that's a girls' school.

I started up in a rage.

"This is really too much."

" Come with me," said Helen, with a look on her face which frightened
me.  She had absolute control of me for eight years.  She took me up to
my bedroom.

" I am quite serious about this Evelyn," she said in a gentle voice.
"It is the only thing to be done.  I don't know whether you are aware
that I can, if I think you fit for your position, let you come of age
when you are twenty-one.  If you behave very obediently as a girl for
two years at the girls' school to which I am going to send you, I may
perhaps shorten your minority."

It was a strong inducement.  Besides, she need not have offered any
inducement.  She had the right to do with me what she liked.  I saw no
escape.

"Of course if I go as a girl to a girls' school for two years, I shall
be allowed to dress as a man at the end."

"If your school-mistress reports favourably.  I don't want to seem
unkind."

I had to consent.  During the next day, I was busy with Helen's
dressmakers, Helen's milliner, Helen's bootmakers, Helen's corsetire.
In ten days I was fetched by a governess.  I went by train in the
summer uniform of the school - a pretty pink frock of ninon, ankle
length, a big white straw hat, long brown glac-kid gloves, and patent
leather button boots with very high heels.  At the school I had a
bedroom to myself, no one knew or found out that I was not a girl and I
went through the most rigid system imaginable all designed to make me
completely girlish in mind and body.  Hair was removed from every part
of my body, except my head, by electric needles and depilatories.
Every morning and every evening I was massaged for an hour to reduce my
waist and develop my bust, and soften my limbs.  Exercises with the
same object were carefully supervised.  I wore face-masks for my
complexion, gloves at night to whiten my hands.  My skin was carefully
tended, my hair treated with lotions and so successfully that it grew
extraordinarily thickly and in two years hung down below my waist.  I
was never allowed to see myself in a mirror, for fear, I suppose, lest
I should revolt against the system.  But of course I was none the less
aware that curves were coming where before there had been angles, that
the muscles were all vanishing from my legs and arms which were
naturally round, that my breasts were developing into the pretty white
round delicately-veined apples of a girl.  I was now back at home,
waiting for Miss Priscilla to inspect the result.  I was in a bedroom
which had been altogether refurnished in mauve.  Over a thick carpet a
covering of mauve glac-kid had been tightly stretched, delicious to
feel under one's feet.  The room was a girl's bedroom, the
dressing-table covered with feminine bottles of perfume and lotion,
jewelled powder boxes, gold-backed brushes.  Why I asked myself since I
was to be a youth again tomorrow?  A beautiful little marble-tiled
bathroom led from it on one side, and a dainty boudoir on the other.
The bed was an exquisite thing in the shape of a swan.  It was
altogether a lovely suite of rooms - for a girl.

"I shall not sleep here tomorrow, "I said to myself, and then the door
opened and Miss Priscilla entered carrying a number of leather
jewel-cases in her hands.



Chapter Two



Miss Priscilla inspects me.  In silk stockings and slippers.  I am to
be punished.  Helen's delight at my changed appearance.  What two years
at a girls' school can do.  My bosom and Miss Priscilla's theory.
Helen tempts me to subjection in vain.

                              ************

I had despised her two years ago.  I shivered with alarm now.  Yet she
had not changed.  She was the same neat, precise, thin, elderly
spinster with the patient air of submission.  It was I who had changed
and at her bidding.  At an age when even the poorest of youths begin to
gain their liberty, I probably the very richest in the country, the
head of one of the oldest families in the country had been calmly
stripped of mine by this old maid and her niece; and they had been able
to do it through their insight into my character.  That is what I
suspected at the time.  What I was soon to know was the truth.

Miss Priscilla was dressed in a high-necked plain gown of grey silk;
she wore the flat square-toed ugly shoes which used to excite my
ridicule.  The solitary touch of luxury about her was a long pair of
glac-kid white gloves which she wore upon her arms.  She looked at me
coldly, critically; there was no expression upon her face and so much
had my two years at the girls' school done to effeminatize me that I
became curious as to what she thought of my looks and a little hurt -
yes, let me admit it - a little hurt that she was not betrayed into an
expression of admiration.  She opened the leather-cases and a rippling
fire of jewels at once made the room glorious to my girlish eyes.  She
advanced to me.  They were for me then those glittering streams of
diamonds, those lustrous rows of pearls!  Oh I loved jewels!  She fixed
a high collar of diamonds round my throat with a diamond bow and a tiny
diamond tassel dangling from it, just behind the left ear.  She passed
a double row of magnificent pearls round my shoulder which hung down to
my waist.  She fixed earrings of big pearls set with diamonds in my
ears which had been pierced.  She fixed a diamond star amongst my
curls, a diamond brooch in the roses at my waist.

"Give me your hands, Denise," she said and on my wrists she fastened
lovely bracelets of gold flashing with diamonds and pigeon-blood
rubies.  They were very tight, and then she fixed another similar pair
above my elbows smoothing up my long gloves carefully before she
clasped them on.

"They will keep your pretty gloves tidy and smooth, she said.  "Now you
can join your hands again behind your back." With each movement the
soft fire of the flashing stones ran over me like water.  Oh now I
wished to see myself in them!  There were a couple of big full-length
mirrors with three panels each such as one sees in a dressmaker's
atelier.  But the panels were closed.

"What is Miss Denise's waist-measure?" Miss Priscilla asked of Phoebe.

"Nineteen inches, Miss," replied Phoebe.

"And the height of her heels?

"Four inches."

Miss Priscilla nodded her approval; she turned to me

"Have you your big diamond buckles on your satin slippers?"

"Yes Miss Priscilla," I replied blushing.

"Lift your skirt and let me see!"

With a shy smile of pleasure - I could not help smiling - I raised in
my delicately-gloved fingers the exquisite satin frock.  There came
into view a pair of small slender feet in exquisitely-cut, new,
glistening, white satin slippers with wonderful arched narrow Louis
Quinze heels, pointed toes embroidered with pearls, butterfly bows of
dainty white tulle and mounted on the bows big blazing diamond buckles.
The slim little slippers were posed with the heels together and the
toes turned out as Phoebe had arranged them.  The skirt rose higher, a
pair of round arched insteps and small finely molded ankles showed
prettily pink through tightly-strained stockings of white silk with
lace insertions.  I had never seen such stockings, never even dreamed
of things so beautiful.  They were of the finest gossamer, transparent
as cobwebs, filmy delicious ornaments rather than coverings with a soft
sheen upon which was lovely.  Stockings and slippers were fit for some
blushing beautiful dbutante of high birth and enormous wealth, to make
her curtsey in before her Queen.  No one else could have afforded them.

Miss Priscilla stooped and held out her hands.

"Give me those pretty feet."

Coquettishly I hesitated, just like a pretty girl who pretends modesty
the better to display what she knows to be her best points.

"Oh Miss Priscilla," I said.

"At once, Denise."

I extended a foot.  She took it in her hands, tried the buckle to make
certain that it was secure, felt the slipper to see that it was tight
enough and measured the heel.

"They are very pretty, she said with cold content.

"Put them together again Denise.  You disobeyed me."

"Miss Priscilla, I only hesitated.

"You were trying your little coquetries on me, Denise," she said with a
shrewd smile which brought the blushes to my face.  "But I punish
coquetry.  You were indulging your vanity by making play with your
dainty slippers and I punish vanity Denise.  You will go down to dinner
and sit through dinner with your pretty mouth gagged.

"A very good thing for Miss Denise," said Phoebe delightedly.

I was startled.

"Oh Miss Priscilla!  I am to sit amongst the guests at a dinner-party -
in this lovely frock - in these satin slippers and stockings - with my
mouth gagged!"

"Yes Denise!"

"Diamond shoe buckles and high heels for my feet and a gag for my
mouth.  Oh, oh!" I gasped.

Poignant emotions stirred me, troubled me, provoked my passions.  I am
to tell the whole truth.  I was ashamed but I anticipated the
punishment with a strange secret thrill of delight.  Ever since I had
been a boy, I had been from time to time besieged with queer fancies
which at first I had laughed at, which afterwards at once fascinated me
and frightened me.  I recognized in them a danger to my character, to
my ambitions and an obstacle to the great career which lay before me.
I had dreamed, in a word, of a world in which ladies to punish me,
dressed me as a girl in the most exquisite of frocks and high-heeled
shoes, gloves and corsets and, then laughing at my pretensions to a
career, kept me in bondage and subjection as a toy for their amusement.
I had fought against these fancies because I felt them to be
enervating, effeminatizing, and likely to sap my will.  I had ridiculed
them as preposterous.  Yet they seemed part of my nature, they returned
and now - they were translated into fact, and being translated into
fact fascinated and obsessed me with a force a thousand times stronger
than ever.  If it had thrilled me with strange delightful emotions to
imagine myself dressed in the luxurious gowns of a fashionable girl,
undergoing punishments and humiliations and dainty tortures at the
hands of a laughing beautiful woman deaf to my prayers, how much more
was I of necessity thrilled and excited when the dream became true as
it was true now!

I tried however to struggle against the strange sweet pleasure which
invaded me.  For I knew that Helen hated me, that she thought I had by
inheriting my father's fortune, robbed her; and I was afraid that she
and Miss Priscilla were seeking by mastering me completely to get it
back.  I was afraid that Miss Priscilla, with her knowledge of
psychopathia, had guessed my secret fancies and by translating them
into fact was seeking to reduce me to a willing servitude.  Was I
right?  Let the reader read on.  Meanwhile the pleasure mastered the
fear as it had done before.  For it was the enervating pleasure of a
dream fulfilled which made me offer so miserable a resistance to my
first corset and my banishment to a girls' school.  There!  The truth
is out.

Miss Priscilla had one more question to ask of me as I stood there
before the mirror with my ivory ankles together and the big buckles
flashing on my glistening slippers.

"There was a third, tight white kid-glove I arranged for you to wear.
Have you it on?" I went scarlet.  But if I did not answer I should be
punished.  I hung my head.

"Yes Phoebe buttoned it on," I replied in a whisper of confusion.  Miss
Priscilla was content.

"It will teach you to be modest in the presence of women, Denise, and
to remember that you are under their authority.  You will wear it
always."

She pulled down my skirt and arranged it so that the toes of my
slippers and an inch of silk-stockinged instep were exposed.  As she
finished, Helen, looking beautiful in a sweeping dcollet gown of black
velvet and shoulder length white kid-gloves entered the room.

I had not to complain of any want of admiration on her part at all
events.  A look of wonder and delight shone in her face.  She uttered a
little rapturous cry.  She ran to me, hugged me and with passionate
kisses bruised my lips.

"Denise!  I am proud of you."

I hung my head, conscious for a moment to the full of my humiliation.
I was her victim.

"Oh Denise!" She laid her face against mine with a bubbling laugh of
delight.  "Your cheek is as soft and fresh as a peach.  You are a
lovely girl."

"I am not a girl," I protested.

"Aren't you darling?  You shall decide for yourself."

One of the great mirrors was placed behind me.  Oh, how excited I
became!  At last after two years I was to see what they had made of me.
The second was placed in front of me unfolded and the bulbs of electric
light which surrounded the frame of the mirrors and were so shaded as
to throw the full light of their rays upon the person standing in front
of them, were turned on.  I stood in a blaze of light.  I stared at
myself.  I uttered a cry and covered my face with my hands.

"Oh I am!  I am a girl!" I admitted with a sigh.

I saw a girl, fair face, mine but refined, softened, improved out of
knowledge.  A wealth of fair glinting hair, done up in the most
fashionable style crowned it.  A broad white forehead and arched
eyebrows darker than my curls, big wistful eyes of dark blue with long
dark eyelashes, a delicate nose, cheeks in which the colour came and
went.  The colour of pale rose-leaves, red lips in a Cupid's bow
smiling (alas!  they were smiling now) and showing a perfect set of
small white teeth, a small rounded chin, little ears - such was Evelyn
Beryl when he came back from school.  Thus Violet Hind described me in
a letter.  Violet and Doris Hind were cousins of Helen.  They had come
to live with Helen just before I had gone away with my tutor.  Violet
was a very pretty auburn-haired girl six months younger than myself.
Doris was fifteen.  I spare myself the humiliation of describing myself
by quoting from her letter which Helen has given me to use.  It goes
on.

"The small dainty head is supported on a slender white throat which
rises from a dimpled lovely white girl's bosom and shoulders.  He has
the round white breasts of a girl.  The pretty valley between them, the
little rose-petals, everything.  His figure is slender, the legs long,
the feet and hands delicious.  He is tall, in his high-heeled shoes
taller than Helen and about the same height as Miss Priscilla.  He is a
girl."

This is what I saw in the mirror - this girl sparkling with jewels from
her feet to her curls, and dressed for a ball in the London season.
Helen was in raptures.  She might well be, since this was her doing.

"You have exceeded all my expectations, darling," she said.

With little cries of delight, she ran her gloved hands over me, feeling
and pinching me behind until I was scarlet.

"Oh Helen, You mustn't," I protested.

"Nonsense, dear!  I am your guardian, keep still, else I will whip the
big soft girlish thing."

"Oh, oh!"

An excruciating sensation made me blush more than ever.

"Whip it - in this lovely frock," I said shyly.

"Ah," cried Helen enthusiastically, "you love your exquisite satin
frock darling, don't you?" It rustled delightfully under her hands.
"And the tulle band here with the big sparkling buckle in front and the
big bow behind?"

"It ties my ankles delightfully," I stammered.

Oh was it I who was speaking ?  "It is like a soft caress upon my
limbs."

Helen applauded me with a radiant face.  She ran her daintily gloved
hands down the dress behind feeling through its thin texture my legs
and calves.

"They're charming," she cried.  "They are as soft as butter.  And you
love your stockings too, Denise, don't you, the exquisite stockings I
deck you out in?"

The feel of her hands pinching affectionately my calves, her dainty air
of mastery - as though she owned me - intoxicated me.

"They are deliciously cool," I said.

"And your white satin slippers with the high-heels and the pretty bows
and the sparkling buckles, you love them too?  Lift up her dress to the
knees Phoebe.  You love your little girl's shoes, Denise?"

Phoebe raised my skirt until the knees, the white satin garters with
the big bows and buckles and the dainty frills of my batiste pantalon
were visible.

"Look in the mirror Denise and tell me gratefully that you love them!"

"If I have got to wear girl's shoes," I replied blushing deeply, they
may as well have high-heels and diamond buckles." Something stronger
than myself made me speak.  In the midst of her delight Helen exchanged
a quick glance with Miss Priscilla.  It was a glance of triumph and it
put me on my guard.

Phoebe let fall my dress and Helen took me round the waist.  You are
delightful Denise.  You are quite a girl now with that pretty white
bosom."

"Yes, Ma'am," said Phoebe, "the breasts have come up wonderful.  I
think Miss Denise ought to be grateful to Miss Priscilla for the
trouble she has taken in arranging the proper exercises and massage and
medicines.

"Oh there was no difficulty," said Miss Priscilla, "the moment I
discovered that Denise had the milk vessels of a woman, I had no doubt
that we could fit him with as pretty a pair of girl's white breasts as
any young lady could wish for."

"The milk vessels," cried Phoebe with a laugh, "then Miss Denise is a
freak?"

"Not at all," said Miss Priscilla calmly.  "The men of the primitive
tribes used to have the milk-vessels.  Miss Denise may be a chance
return to the primitive type.  Or originally it might have been that
nature was going to give Evelyn a twin sister, and that their embryos
got mixed.  That happens not infrequently.

Helen laughed.

"In any case, Denise has a girl's bosom - for life.  She touched them
with her gloved fingers and daintily caressed them with little
titillations of the nipples, sending waves of delicious sensation
through my veins.  "They are a real punishment, dear, for all the
trouble you have given us.  You can't get rid of them as you could of
your girl's shoes and stockings if we were to let you.  They are a
permanent proof to you of the wisdom of being gentle and obedient to
women."

"But you are going to let me get rid of my girl's shoes and stockings
to-morrow.  You promised faithfully, Helen," I said.

Helen held me firmly, caressed me, bruised my lips with burning kisses.

"You don't want to get rid of them Denise.  You love them!  You love
your dainty frocks.  You will be much happier as a girl."

She pleaded with me, her voice, the perfume of her breath, the feel of
her limbs through my dress against mine tempted me.  I felt inclined to
let myself go in her arms, to say, "Helen I belong to you." But I
remembered my ambitions.

"No, no I have your word," I cried.  "I must be a man.  I am to marry
and begin a great family."

The three women burst out laughing, confusing me dreadfully.

Helen cried:

"Oh Denise I would love to see your wife's face when she first
discovers your girl's bosom.  No, no my dear, you shall love your
pretty frocks, your smart corsets, your long gloves and your lovely
little high-heeled slippers."

"No, no," I insisted obstinately, and Helen with an exclamation of
annoyance let me go.  She had after all only pretended to be
affectionate, though she had very nearly deceived me.  Now her face
became stern with anger.  She looked at me with threatening eyes.
"Very well," she said, "but I warn you Denise, you will come on your
knees to me to ask me to put you back into girl's clothes.  Now go down
to the drawing-room, and take care how you walk.  Point your toes, arch
your feet.  Here's your fan!"

She gave me a lovely fan of ivory and gold.  I turned from her towards
the door when Miss Priscilla called me back.

"You forget that you have to be punished, Denise, she said calmly; and
she told Helen of my coquetry and of the punishment she meant to
inflict.



Chapter Three



A humiliating preliminary to punishment.  Gagged at my step-sister's
dinner-party.  Lady Hartley's views about young ladies.  "They should
be dressed beautifully and treated as dainty convicts." I am bound,
fettered and caned in my evening frock and high-heeled shoes.  In the
corner, like a child under Miss Priscilla's observation.

                              ************

"Certainly she must be punished," said Helen.  She pushed towards me a
gilt chair with a white satin seat.

"Lift your skirt carefully, Denise, and kneel on this chair," she said
sternly.

A little frightened, I obeyed at once this humiliating order.  Helen
dipped a pen in the ink upon the writing-table.

"It is the rule in this house, Denise," she said, "that one punishment
always involves a second to be inflicted later on; and so that we may
not forget it we make a note of it upon the sole of one of the
culprit's smart shoes."

"Oh!" I protested.  "I am to be punished twice for the same fault."

"That is the rule.  It teaches pretty young ladies to be careful to
avoid punishment altogether."

She took my instep in her hand and stooped over my feet.  My position
was of course extraordinarily humiliating.  But the feel of her gloved
hand on my round, warm, silk-stockinged instep, and the sight of her in
the mirror as she wrote down in a tiny hand on the new white sole of my
dainty satin-slipper the punishment I was to endure, fixing upon me the
evidence of my disgrace, sent a voluptuous thrill through my blood.

"Now stay as you are, Denise, until the ink is dry, she said, and,
laying down the pen, she adjusted my feet, taking care with her usual
love of neatness, that my ankles were pressed together, and my
high-heels and pointed toes exactly level.

Miss Priscilla meanwhile squeezed and rolled into a ball a small lace
handkerchief which she had been soaking in Eau-de-Cologne.  She came
over to me with the ball in her hand.

"Open your mouth, Denise!"

I obeyed.  She thrust the handkerchief into my mouth.

"Close your mouth now, dear!"

The Eau-de-Cologne burnt my tongue and the roof of my mouth in the most
painful way.  Tears rifled my eyes.

" Oh!  Oh!" I cried in a stifled voice, wringing my hands.

Miss Priscilla smiled at my sufferings.

"The Eau-de-Cologne will keep your mouth fresh and sweet, darling," she
said and she took up a bigger handkerchief of the finest lawn and
carefully folded it.  This she adjusted over my lips and tied the end
very tightly behind at the back of my hair, binding my mouth so that I
could not utter a sound.

"Now stand up Denise!"

I stood up and Miss Priscilla carefully smoothed down my shining skirt.
What a bizarre spectacle met my eyes in the mirror!  I saw a grown-up
girl in an exquisite evening gown of white satin with her mouth gagged,
her white throat and bosom flashing with jewels, her white-gloved hands
toying with a pretty fan, the delicate bows and bright buckles of her
luxurious little slippers, peeping out from delicious billows of white
tulle.

But what made the spectacle so piquant and seductive to me was the
knowledge that the pretty girl was myself, an effeminate youth in
corsets with his kid-gloved hands quite free.  He could have torn the
gag from his lips in a second.  There were only two ladies to prevent
him.  But he did not dare.  He was undergoing discipline in girls'
frocks and pearl-embroidered satin slippers at their hands.  He was
being punished by them.  He was in subjection.

"Now go downstairs into the drawing-room, Denise," said Helen.  "Our
guests will be arriving in a minute."

I was to be seen by her guests in this ignominious condition.  The
shame of it came home to me.  I looked piteously at Helen.  But there
was no sign of relenting in her face.  Luckily, I thought, the guests
will not recognize me.  It is only Denise the girl whom they will see
with the gag in her mouth and Denise disappears for ever to-morrow.  I
picked up the train of my frock and went sadly out of the room.  As I
turned to latch the door, I heard Helen ask:

"Well, what do you think?"

And Miss Priscilla reply:

"...  In a few weeks he will be the prettiest fetichiste-du-pied in the
world." And then they both laughed heartlessly.

I was troubled by the words.  What was a fetichiste-du-pied?  I must
find out.  I had an intuition that phrase was the secret to the riddle,
was the clue to the plot they had concocted to nullify and ruin me.
But I had no time to think about it now.  My heels were so high and
thin, my skirt so tight, that I had to be extremely careful in going
downstairs.  There were two big maids like Phoebe waiting in the hall
to receive the guests and they both burst out laughing when they saw
me.  They knew who I was at all events and my cheeks grew hot with
shame.

There was no one as yet in the drawing-room, but my heart sank at the
ordeal in front of me.

I heard a light quick step outside and Doris Hind, now a lovely girl of
fifteen in a smart little short frock of pale pink mousseline de sole
with black silk stockings and patent leather slippers ran into the
room.  A bright fire was burning in the grate; I turned to it, to hide
my gag as long as I could.

" Who are you, you pretty thing?" she asked.

I could not answer.

"What's the matter ?

She turned me round and saw the gag over my mouth.  She stared at me
astonished for a moment.  Then the truth broke in upon her and she
clapped her hands with pleasure.

"You are Denise.  And Helen has gagged you.  How delicious!  You are a
perfect girl now, Denise."

I blushed to the roots of my hair, and unconsciously I placed one foot
upon the fender to warm it, lifting my skirt an inch or two.  Doris
uttered a rapturous cry.

"What adorable feet!  And, oh Denise, what divine little satin
slippers.  Let me see!" I blushed again, but this time it was with
pleasure.

"What lovely buckles and what fairy-like bows!  And those dear little
pearl-embroidered toes!  And what jolly high-heels.  Show me your
ankles!"

I raised the skirt higher, and the delicate cleanly rounded ankle in
its shimmering cobweb of silk and lace came into view.  Doris went into
an ecstasy.  "I should like to perch you on still higher heels dear,
and keep you in a glass case to show to my friends.  That's really all
that you are fit for now.  Walk across the room you exquisite thing,
and let me see how daintily you can do it in your beautiful high-heeled
shoes." I was delighted with her admiration, but I shook my head at her
request.

At once she stamped her foot peremptorily.  "Quick, or I'll punish
you," she cried.  "Pick up your train and let me see those buckles
flashing on your dainty butterfly bows this instant."

I submitted.  I was beginning to learn that one of the inevitable
consequences of allowing myself to be dressed as a girl was that
everyone, even young girls like Doris, who knew the secret, treated me
as a little child in spite of my long dcollet gown and fine jewels.  I
walked daintily across the room and back.  Doris applauded me laughing.

"I don't know a girl, Denise, who wouldn't envy your figure and your
feet and ankles.  Oh, but you must be kept in high-heeled shoes all
your life!  It would be ridiculous now that Helen has got you so smart
and pretty to let you go back into stupid trousers."

At that moment Helen and Miss Priscilla came into the room; and the
guests began to arrive.  There was Mrs.  Dawson the clergyman's wife,
Lady Hartley and her pretty daughter who was just out; Mr.  and Mrs.
Charles Rivers, about twenty people altogether, mostly young and all of
them neighbours whom I had known as a boy.  I was introduced to them as
Denise Beryl, a cousin, and Helen explained how I came to be punished
with a gag.  I had to stand and listen, but my cheeks burned with
shame.

"Denise is unfortunately very vain," said Helen.  "I had to punish her
because she would show off her feet in an unlady-like way."

"She is very lucky to have got off so easily," said Lady Hartley with
severity looking down at my feet through her glasses.  "I should not
only have gagged her, I should have taken her pretty slippers away from
her altogether," and then to my amazement and my horror, "Mr.  Guy
Repton" was announced and my old schoolfellow came into the room.

He had been expelled in disgrace because of me.  How did Helen come to
know him ?  Her first words explained.

"This is my new steward and agent," she said as she introduced him.  I
was horrified.  He was the new manager of my estates.  He was a young
man of twenty two with a fair moustache.  Helen had given him a fine
position, a good income.  She must have sought him out on purpose,
because I had caused his disgrace.  She wished to surround me with my
enemies, I felt sure.  A subtle stroke of hers was thus brought to my
notice.  Guy Repton would be grateful to her and already he hated me.
Helen did not even pretend to conceal the reason for her choice of him.
She darted a triumphant look at me.  I felt more and more helpless in
her hands.

We were waiting for dinner to be announced, when Lady Hartley, a
handsome matron of forty-five, came to me, took me by the arm, and led
me into a little drawing room which led off from the big one.  She
pointed to a sofa.

"Lie down there on your face, young lady," and as I hesitated, she
pinched my ear painfully.  "At once." Reluctantly I stretched myself
out on the sofa.  Oh, what did she mean to do with me ?

"I saw something written on the sole of your slipper, as you walked
across the room," she said.  "A punishment of course." She felt for my
foot under my satin gown and lifted it up, read Helen's note.  She
looked puzzled.  "I wonder what it means," she said.  "You can get up."

We went back into the big room.  Violet, Doris's elder sister had just
come down.

"I am very sorry for being late," she faltered breathlessly, with a
frightened appeal to Helen.  She looked perfectly lovely in a chiffon
gown of nattier blue, which set off her white skin, and her fair hair
to perfection.  Helen looked sternly at her, but did not answer.

Dinner was announced.

"Mr.  Repton, will you take in Denise," said Helen.  "I am sorry to
have to give you so silent a companion."

I sat gagged at the dinner-table bright with flowers, amongst those
smartly dressed people, unable to eat, unable to talk.  I felt terribly
humiliated.  It was cruel to make me come down to dinner at all.  I
found it difficult to breathe.  I was very hungry besides.  It was all
I could do not to burst into tears.  To make things worse the company
began to talk about me Evelyn Beryl.  "It is such a pity that he is
coming home to-morrow," said Mrs.  Dawson." It has been so pleasant and
peaceful here while he has been at his girls' school." Everyone agreed.
It was a revelation to me how thoroughly unpopular I was.  I felt
ashamed of my past behaviour.

"I think you will all find him greatly changed for the better," said
Helen with a smile.  "His head-mistress's report speaks most highly of
his docility and his ladylike ways." How I blushed.  Luckily no one
knew that I was present except Helen.

"I can quite believe it," said Guy Repton with a hateful snigger.  "I
think that you are all a little unjust to poor Evelyn.  I don't think
that his nature is really bad, but as a boy he was not in his proper
position.  He must have known that dressed in male clothes he looked
silly and ridiculous, and no doubt he felt uncomfortable, and that very
probably made him arrogant and intolerable.  But dressed and treated as
a girl he would no longer have that feeling of discomfort.  He would
probably be quite charming." I could have boxed Guy Repton's ears for
his impertinence.  "Very likely you are right," said Lady Hartley, "but
then he ought to be kept a girl an his life."

"Oh yes," cried Mrs.  Rivers turning enthusiastically to Helen.  I had
thrown a stone through the drawing-room window of her house, just after
she and Charles Rivers had got married.  She had never forgiven me.
Helen shook her head.

I promised him that he should not have to wear girls' clothes after the
two years if he behaved himself." She made a sign to Netta one of the
parlor-maids.  Netta took the handkerchief from my mouth and the second
one from between my lips.  My face was revealed, and Mrs.  Rivers cried
out enthusiastically, "Oh what a pretty girl!"

I blushed with pleasure, and then the most unfortunate event occurred.
I had been sitting with my napkin on my lap, although I had no dinner.
I had been consumed with curiosity to know what strange punishment it
was which Helen had written down on the sole of my foot.  So, while the
rest were talking I had slipped off my left shoe.  Then dropping my
napkin I had stooped to pick it up and at the same time I picked up in
it the dainty high heeled slipper.  I held it carefully in my lap and
read on the white smartly shaped new sole the words "The glass-boxes."

I was wondering what strange punishment the punishment of the
"glass-boxes could be with a thrill of awe, and believing that no one
bad seen my manoeuvre, when Mrs.  Rivers uttered her admiring cry; but
Lady Hartley had been watching me and she said at once severely:  "Yes,
a very pretty girl who has kicked one of her dainty slippers off."

I hung my head in confusion.

"Is that true Denise ?  Let me see!" said Helen.

"Yes Helen," I said humbly and lifted up the slipper.

Helen called to Netta.

"Take a shoe-horn, and put on Miss Denise's shoe."

Netta turned round my chair, and drew the slipper on my foot and put me
back at the table.  Then she took the bracelets from my wrists,
unbuttoned my gloves there, slipped my hands out and turned the gloves
back.

"Yes, a very pretty girl," said Lady Hartley severely, "but if you were
my pretty girl, I should tie her gloved hands behind her back, and
stand her in the corner with her face to the wall, and her dainty heels
together." My cheeks grew red with shame.  But underneath the shame I
was suddenly conscious of a passionate longing to be punished in that
childish and humiliating way before all of these gaily dressed people.
I tried to shake the obsession off.  It was dangerous, enervating,
effematizing.  But the venom was in my veins.  I tried to think of my
ambitions, my career.  I could only think of the little new shining
satin slippers which so daintily imprisoned my feet under the table,
the fairly-like bows, the big blazing buckles, the pointed
pearl-embroidered toes.  I felt the high Louis Quinze heels sinking
deliciously into the thick carpet.  Oh to be made to stand upon them
publicly in a corner with my face to the wall, and my gloved hands tied
behind my back like a naughty child.  I a grown up young lady in a long
satin frock with my white shoulders and bejewelled throat rising from
the lace and ruffles of my gleaming corsage!  I rubbed my legs together
in a spasm of desire.  And then as Netta placed my dinner before me and
filled my glass with champagne, Helen cried out with a laugh.

"But dear Lady Hartley, that is exactly what I am going to do with
Denise."

The men looked sympathetically at me, but all the ladies were
delighted.  For myself I had to bend my head over my plate to hide a
smile of delight.  Mr.  Rivers actually pleaded for my forgiveness, but
Helen would not hear of it.

"And I think Helen is so right," said Lady Hartley.  "I am very
interested in the punishment of young ladies.  People allow them such a
ridiculous amount of liberty nowadays that it is quite refreshing to
find someone like Helen.  To dress them beautifully and treat them like
dainty convicts.  That is the only way to keep the silly creatures in
good order," she said sternly.

I ate my dinner quickly, the longing to be punished tingled through my
veins.  Already I felt Helen's quick little daintily-gloved fingers
binding my wrists behind me with satin ribbons and adjusting my feet in
exquisite finery.  As soon as dinner was over, cigarettes and coffee
were handed round.  I lit a cigarette.  It was two years since I had
smoked one.  Oh how I enjoyed it now!  I leaned back in my chair, a
smile of delight upon my face.

There was to be a dance for the people of the village after dinner in
the village hall.  We were all to go in to it.  Helen rose.

"Mr.  Repton," she said, "will you take the gentlemen down to the hall
when they are ready.  There are two motor-cars.  They can come back for
us.  If you will start the people dancing we will come in for a little
while later.  Then we can all come back here, have a little dance
ourselves and some supper."

"Certainly, Miss Deverel," said Guy Repton respectfully.

The other two ladies rose and Helen said to them:  "Bring your
cigarettes, all of you except Denise.  I can't have you standing in the
corner Denise, with a cigarette between your lips."

Blushing I laid my cigarette on my plate and followed the ladies from
the room.  As they crossed the hall, I heard Lady Hartley say to Helen:

"I thought that I read on the sole of Denise's slipper that you were
thinking of a different punishment for her."

"Yes," replied Helen, "standing in the comer I look upon as a
preliminary.  The real punishment will be inflicted later on after
supper."

"It sounds a curious one - 'The glass-boxes'."

" I think it is interesting and ingenious.  You shall see it."

I was curious myself as to what the punishment was going to be -
curious and frightened.

We all went into the small dressing-room, a lovely little room
decorated in white and gold with a polished parquet floor scattered
with thick white rugs of Persian silk.  It was brightly illuminated
with shaded electric lamps and a cheerful fire burned upon the hearth.
The ladies took their seats in comfortable chairs about the fire with
an air of eager expectation, smoking their cigarettes.  Helen placed me
in the middle and handed a little silver button-hook to her young
cousin in the smart short pink frock.

"Doris, put Denise's hands back into her gloves and button them
carefully," she said.

I gave my hands to Doris, who smoothed the tight white kid-gloves on
over my fingers and fixed the buttons while Helen went over to a
bureau.  She opened a drawer and came back carrying a large leather
case and a number of strong white satin gleaming straps with big oval
diamond buckles sparkling upon them.  She placed the leather case on
the mantel-shelf and the straps on a chair.  Her face was radiant, her
eyes danced with pleasure.

"Now Denise, we will truss you up tightly and prettily," she said with
a thrill of delight in her voice.  She removed from my arms the gold
bracelets above the elbows which I wore to keep my gloves stretched
tight and round each arm just where the bracelet had been she buckled a
broad white satin strap very tightly.  Neither the diamond buckles nor
the eye-holes were at the ends of the straps so that after the ribbon
had been fastened two broad ends hung from each arm.  These ends she
tied in big bows and passed them back through the oval buckles which
thus flashed daintily in the middle of the bows.  The bows and buckles
were on the outside of my arms, and on the inside of each strap a
little steel ring was stoutly sewn.  Helen then took a tiny bar of
polished steel with a spring-hook at each end of it.  She snapped the
hooks on to the steel rings forcing my arms together with a strength of
which I should never have believed her capable.

"There," she said, "I can now tie the wrists comfortably." She sat
down.

"Stand with your back to me Denise." My elbows almost touched in the
small of my back.  My shoulders were drawn most painfully back.  An
extraordinary sense of helplessness, delightful and at the same time
alarming overwhelmed me.  Slowly and with hesitation I obeyed my cruel
little tyrant.  I stood in front of her chair with my back towards her,
and I crossed my daintily gloved wrists for her to bind.  There were
mirrors let into the wall panels and I could see myself in my
glistening white frock, which delightfully reflected the lights, from
the buckles and pearls gleaming on my satin slippers to the curls of my
exquisitely coiffured head as I stood in this humiliating position of
subjection.  Yet how the spectacle aroused my passions!  I felt
dreadfully excited.

"Keep quite still now, Denise," said Helen, with a laugh.  "Have you
ever had your hands tied together for bad behaviour before?"

"Never Helen."

"It seems a pity that you should have to have them tied up on an
evening when you look so pretty and are so delightfully dressed."

And my girlish vanity made me answer with a smile of confusion.

"If I have got to have my hands tied behind me would rather be prettily
dressed than not for the ceremony." The ladies laughed, I blushed, and
Lady Hartley cried out:

"That is charming of you Denise."

I felt Helen's fingers and suddenly was it in a panic or was it to
prolong the delight I felt?  I began to struggle.  But my arms were
already bound, and the struggle was soon over.  In the mirror I saw
four white gloved-hands suddenly interlaced and fluttering like four
doves.  Two quick, little nervous strong hands, Helen's and two slender
helpless things, my own.  The four hands fell apart.  Helen's were
holding the ends of white satin strap which encircled my wrists and
drawing it tighter and ever tighter.  Mine were glued together wi
helpless twitching fingers.  "Oh, oh, you are hurting me Helen," I
protested.  "You shouldn't make it necessary for me to hurt you,
darling," she answered, and she tied the bow and passed it through the
oval diamond buckle as she had done with the other straps.

"That will do," she said, rising briskly.  My arms hung down behind me
in their delicate long kid-gloves, inert, useless.  She took me by the
elbow.

"Take care how you walk on your high-heels now that your hands are tied
behind you Denise.  Point your toes, arch your pretty insteps!"

She led me to a corner by the fire and placed me in it with my face to
the wall.  "Hold your head well up darling!  That's right!  Put the
high-heels together, and turn out the pointed toes.  Let me see!"

She stooped down and picking up the train of my dress wound it tightly
round my legs tying them in its folds and exposing to view my ankles
and feet.  She fixed it at the knees with a satin strap.

"Now stand without moving," she said, and with the handle of her fan
she gave me a sharp tap on my bare white shoulder.

"Take care!  If I see a flutter of the butterfly bows or a flash of the
diamond buckles on your daintily slippered feet I will lock a bright,
tight pair of fetters over your gossamer silk stockings, round your
slender ankles, which will bind them so fast that you won't be able to
twitch one of your toes."

"Oh Helen," I sighed.  But it was not a sigh of alarm.  It was a sigh
of voluptuous, languorous desire.

Strange as it may seem it was delicious to be standing daintily in the
corner with my arms and hands cruelly bound behind me in my exquisite
satin frock, my long girls' gloves of supple white kid and my jewels, a
pretty punished thing of ribbons and pearls, and rich lace.  But to
have my ankles in their girls' lustrous transparent open-worked white
silk stockings fettered tightly together too!  To stand in a corner
with my girlish feet unable to move in their exquisitely cut
high-heeled slippers of white satin with the delicate bows, the diamond
buckles, the pearl-embroidered toes, to see my round pink insteps
gleaming daintily through, the lace insertions of stockings which only
the richest of heiresses would wear at a ball in the London season!
The mere thought of it made me almost swoon with delight.  This is what
I had dreamed of I could make my dream-world real by a single movement.
An irresistible impulse to do so was upon me.

"I don't see the use of my wearing beautiful satin slippers with
valuable diamond buckles if I have to hide them in a comer," I
pretended to grumble.

"Nonsense, Miss Denise," replied that common and practical woman Mrs.
Dawson," it is delightful to us to see an elegant young lady with
pretty feet smartly shod standing obediently in the comer." She evoked
a picture of myself in my mind which carried me away.

"Mayn't I even do this?" I asked impertinently and I stretched out a
foot pointing the toe, and drew it back again.  An exclamation of
indignation at my wilfulness broke from all those tyrannical ladies.

"Lock and chain together those satin slippered feet at once, Helen,"
cried Lady Hartley.

"I will indeed," answered Helen.  "Come Violet, Miss Hartley, help me
please." With the assistance of the two young ladies she absolutely
carried me from the corner, lifted me on to a chair, and held me
standing on it.

"Support her please," said Helen.  I was quite helpless, with my satin
train swathed round my legs and my hands and arms tied behind me.
Helen opened the leather case and took out a pair of bright fetters of
thin polished steel.

"Oh they are too small," I cried.  "They will never go round my
ankles." "Hold your tongue," said Helen and she stooped over my little
buckled feet.  Oh, wonderful blissful moment!  I felt the cold cruel
bands close about my ankles.  Click, click, sounded sharply through the
room.  It was done now, past recall.  I was chained.  Thrills of
voluptuous exquisite delight tingled warmly through me from my
high-heels to my curls.  I looked down - oh bizarre and entrancing
spectacle!  I saw the bright bands of steel glistening on my filmy silk
stockings, fettering my ankles.  I saw the small feet in gleaming white
satin pearl-embroidered slippers, made doubly dainty with quivering
butterfly bows and blazing diamond buckles - slippers for a beautiful
girl to dance in at a Court Ball, chained together unable to move.  Oh
what waves of sensuous pleasure swept over me!  Helen raised her hands
and smoothed down my skirt from the waist to the knees.  Oh the look,
the touch of those little active masterful kid-gloved hands, which
having bound my arms and wrists behind me, and fettered my ankles, were
now engaged on the feminine work of making my frock set prettily.  The
blood rushed into my face.  A pang of undreamt-of bliss shook me.

"Oh, oh," I murmured.  I stood quite still with every nerve tense.  It
seemed to me that Helen's hands half-opened a door into an unimagined
Paradise.  She looked up at my rapt face shrewdly.  Then in a
triumphant whisper she said.

"You wanted me to chain your feet, Denise."

Her words brought me to my senses.  It was part of her plan I was sure,
to produce in me a craving for these dainty punishments.  It was part
of her plot to keep me in subjection.

"Lift the pretty creature down," said Helen contemptuously; and when I
was placed standing again on the parquet floor, she added with a slow
malicious smile, "I think Denise, darling, that since you are so
disobedient, before I put you back into your corner I had better give
those tied kid-gloved hands a sound caning.

"Oh please no," I cried in terror.

Helen turned to Lady Hartley.

"Don't you think that I am right, Lady Hartley?" she asked.

"Certainly.  You will be doing Denise a real kindness."

"Then, Doris, will you go and find Phoebe and ask her to bring a strong
thick cane for Miss Denise?"

"Oh please Helen," I whimpered, "I have never been caned.  Oh, I will
go on my knees to you."

"You can't darling," said Helen, "you have your smart feet chained
together.  Don't be silly!"

She turned me round and felt the palms of my bound hands.

"I am afraid, "she said with a hypocritical regret.  For she was
laughing with excitement and pleasure.  "I am afraid that even through
these kid-gloves the cane will hurt and sting you terribly dear.  Your
hands are so deliciously soft."

I wriggled and struggled in vain.  Oh what a fool I had been to let her
bind and fetter me!  I was helplessly at her mercy now.

Phoebe brought in a long pliable thick bamboo cane, a dreadful weapon.
Helen made it whistle through the air.  I shrank and trembled.

"Oh don't cane me," I implored.  "I am too old to be caned."

Helen burst out into a callous laugh at my abject entreaty.  The other
ladies moved excitedly in their chairs, tapping with their heels on the
floor, making their pretty dresses rustle.  All of them were eager to
see me soundly caned in my lovely clothes.

"Come Denise, don't disgrace those buckled satin slippers by so much
cowardice!" said Helen.

She seized me.  She thrust her left arm in between my bound arms and my
back and lifted my hands off my back into the air.

"Stand well up dear."

She raised the cane high above her head.

I couldn't move.

"One!"

She brought it down with a cruel force.  I bit my lips to repress a
cry.

"Two!"

A second time the terrible cane slashed my hands, stinging me
dreadfully.  Even in my fetters I sprang into the air.

"Keep your feet still," cried Helen savagely, "or I will cane you
across the thin soles of your dainty satin slippers as well.  Three!"

In spite of myself a cry of pain burst from my lips as the third stroke
curled round my hands.  Helen drew in a long breath of satisfaction,
and the cane rose in the air again.

"Four,"

"Oh, oh!"

"Open the hands well darling, so that the kid-gloves are tightly
stretched over the palms, and keep the thumbs out of the way of the
strokes of the cane.  Five!"

"I was in dreadful pain.  My hands were on fire.  My white bosom heaved
and fell in violent jerks.  Sobs broke in my throat.

"Six!"

I burst into a torrent of tears.  The ladies actually applauded Helen.
How cruel woman can be!  Helen herself was flushed with pleasure.  She
grew more severe with each stroke.

"Seven!  Oh I love to see you crying Denise!" she said.  But she was
not thinking of Denise.  It was Evelyn Beryl she was punishing for
having inherited her father's fortune.  I writhed and screamed.  Yes,
screamed.

"Eight!" she cried triumphantly and the slashing cane burnt my hands as
if it had been a hot wire.  I wriggled.

"Keep still Denise!  Don't rub your knees together under your frock in
that indecent way.  You'll tear the lace frills of your drawers if you
do.

"Oh Helen!" I sobbed.  "Let me go."

"Nine!  and don't squeeze your satin slippers against one another.
You'll ruin the butterfly bows.  Ten!  And you are to dance in them
to-night and show them off!  Eleven!"

I shivered from head to foot and yelled.

"Now for the last!  Twelve!"

The last was a dreadful stroke.

"Oh untie my hands!" I screamed.  "Take my gloves off!  Let me plunge
my hands into cold water!  Oh, my palms are on fire."

Helen laid down the cane.

"Keep quiet," she said.  "Violet, Miss Hartley!"

They lifted me up and carried me writhing in agony into the corner and
placed me once more standing with my face to the wall.

"Your head well up!  Turn your shoe-buckles out!  She stooped and
adjusted my chained feet.

"Now cry away baby, as much as you like, while we go down to the
village.  Aunt Priscilla will sit here while we are away and see that
you don't move," she whispered in my ear.  "Think of your pretty feet!
Think that in those dainty buckled high-heeled satin slippers I have
caned you Denise," she whispered caressingly, tempting me with
seductive images.

The ladies put on their cloaks and went away.  I was left in the little
sitting-room, standing in the corner, sobbing bitterly while Miss
Priscilla, seated at the bureau where she could see every movement that
I made, callously wrote letters.

She had no pity for me in my bondage and misery.  She was perpetually
chiding me.  One moment it would be, "Don't work your shoulders in that
violent way.  Keep them still and sob silently!"

At another:

"I see your fingers twitching, Denise.  Open your hands and let them
lie quiet against your satin dress." And a third time it would be,
"Your feet are trembling Denise.  Keep them still.  Your
slipper-buckles are flashing so that they continually attract my eyes.
I shall have to cut them off your shoes."

She came over to the corner with a pair of scissors in her hand.  All
my vanity, all my love for my dainty slippers rose in alarm.

"Oh please don't cut the buckles off.  Please Miss Priscilla!"

"Be careful, then," she said and rapped my insteps exposed in their
open-worked thin silk stockings with the handle of her fan until my
tears broke out afresh.

At last the pain of my hands began to diminish.  I sniffed rather than
sobbed.  Finally I said in a humble voice, "Miss Priscilla!"

"Well, what is it?" she answered testily.

"My hands are tied.  Would you be kind enough to wipe my nose for me."

She consented.  I was eighteen years old, a youth, the owner of this
house, a person of great wealth and position.  And yet standing in a
comer in a girl's evening frock of white satin, girl's gloves, girl's
silk stockings and high-heeled shoes, girl's tight satin corsets and
frilled batiste drawers, girl's earrings, and necklaces, and my long
hair done up beautifully like a girl's, bound with my hands behind me,
and my ankles chained, I had to have my nose wiped by an old maid whom
a year or two ago I despised.  With what strange contrasts does life
provide us!"



Chapter Four



I complain of my high-heels, and tight corset, and am soundly slapped.
A leg-whipping.  Back to my comer.  A delicious hour.  A delightful
dance.  The punishment of the glass-boxes and a fit of hysterics.  The
evening ends pleasantly.  Almost contented to remain a girl.

                              ************

The minutes passed slowly.  A little clock upon the mantel-shelf struck
the quarter, and afterwards the hour.

"Miss Priscilla," I said again.

"What is it?"

"Mayn't I be released now?  My feet ache so, arched over high-heels."

"If you knew how pretty and smart you looked Denise, standing in your
corner, you would never want to come out of it," she said calmly.

"But my corset hurts me, it's so tight, and my fetters gall my ankles.
Oh Miss Priscilla I am so unhappy," I said piteously.

Miss Priscilla rose with a cry of annoyance.  She came over to my
comer, felt my hands, stooped and felt my legs.

"The hands will do as they are," she said."But your feet are hot, and
the fetters tight.  We can't have your pretty ankles swollen."

She took the little key from the mantel-shelf and unlocked the fetters.
What a relief it was!  She unfastened the train of my dress from about
my knees, and let it drop on the ground.

"Sit down there."

She pointed to the sofa.  I stumbled across the room and sat down; my
legs were numbed.

"Give me your feet."

Miss Priscilla knelt down in front of me and with her clever skilful
hands, trained in hospital work, she massaged my ankles, taking the
stiffness out of my joints in a moment or two.

"There!  Now the pretty things won't swell up, she said.

"Oh thank you Miss Priscilla," I said gratefully.

"Stand up Denise!"

I obeyed.  She unhooked my dress at the back, first taking off my sash.
Then feeling under my cache-corset she loosened my corset laces.  Oh
what a joy it was to draw in a deep breath, to be relieved of the
constriction about my waist, and of the painful binding about my hips.

Then to my dismay I felt my drawers slipping down.  In loosening my
corset laces, Miss Priscilla had by mistake, as I thought, untied the
strings of my pantalon.  I felt a delicacy in mentioning the fact to
her.  I pressed my thighs together and held the pantalon up at my
knees.  It was very uncomfortable.  But I should soon have my hands
untied, I hoped, and I could then slip upstairs and rearrange myself.
Suddenly however I felt a violent tug.

"Draw in your breath Denise, and expel it!  That is right,"and Miss
Priscilla drew in my corsets tighter than ever, and tied the laces.

"Oh it's worse than before," I moaned.

"Hold your tongue," she answered in her calm peaceful voice, "or I'll
lace you up in stay laces from your neck to the tips of your
satin-slippers." What a terrible threat!  She hooked up my dress,
readjusted my sash about my waist and then thrust her hand inside my
skirt.

"Where are the frills of your drawers?" She seized them.

"Open your legs Denise." She pulled the drawers down to my ankles.  It
was not by mistake then that she had untied the strings.  She had meant
to do it.  Why?

I was soon to know.  Miss Priscilla sat down upon the sofa and sedately
smoothed her silk skirt over her knees.  Then she drew on and buttoned
her long glac-kid shining gloves.

"Come to me Denise."

I shuffled forward shamefacedly, my pantalon clogging my ankles and
lace frills frothing about my satin slippers in the most untidy fashion
until I reached Miss Priscilla's side.  Then she seized me and with a
sudden effort flung me across her knees face downwards.

"Oh Miss Priscilla," I cried startled out of my wits.

"What are you going to do with me?" She took up my skirt with its long
train and turning it back, heaped the rich satin folds about my back.
My thighs, my buttocks were exposed naked.

"Oh, oh!" I protested, my cheeks fiery with shame.

"I am going to slap this white soft fat girl's bottom, said Miss
Priscilla, as calmly as if she were in the habit of doing it every day.
"I am going to teach you Denise not to complain when you are placed in
the corner."

"But Miss Priscilla, you yourself admitted that the steel fetters were
too cruel."

"I didn't admit that your corset was too tight, or that your pretty
heels were too high."

She began to pinch between her kid gloved fingers the white flesh.

"Oh Miss Priscilla, remember that I am eighteen," I protested.

"You must first remember it yourself, dear, and not behave as if you
were six."

She raised her gloved hand and brought it down with a resounding slap
upon my quivering bottom.  I could not endure it.  The kid-glove stung
my tender flesh, but the childlike character of the chastisement stung
my soul.  I lashed out with my legs trying to kick my feet free from
the delicate fetters of my batiste drawers.  But the frills clung about
my toes, and caught on the high-heels and diamond buckles of my shoes.

"It's abominable," I cried, "to treat me like a little girl."

But the kid-gloved hand rose pitilessly again and came down heavily
upon naked and helpless flesh.  I moaned, I plunged, I writhed upon
Miss Priscilla's knees.  I kicked, I strained impotently at the ribbons
which bound my hands.

Miss Priscilla laughed mincingly, as she looked down at my extended
form.

"Really Denise, your skin is delightfully soft and tender.  They must
have taken a great deal of trouble with your body at the girls' school.
I don't blame you for kicking your legs about in this wanton fashion,
but I must take precautions so that you shan't spoil your beautiful
satin slippers."

She raised me up and placed me sitting on the sofa.

Then she knelt on one knee in front of me, and flung my dress up above
my knees.

"Stretch the dainty things out on to my knee, Denise, I will muffle and
tie them up in your drawers.  Otherwise you will in your struggles
break your buckles against the furniture, or catch them in my dress and
then I should have to get a birch and whip you properly."

I blushed, hiding my legs away under the sofa.

"Very well," said Miss Priscilla rising calmly to her feet."I must whip
those soft pretty legs with a riding whip."

"Oh no," I cried in a panic stretching out my feet to her.

"Too late dear,"said Miss Priscilla.  She fetched a terrible little
thin riding-switch of whalebone with a jewelled handle from a table on
which it lay ready.

"But my silk stockings are so thin and fine," I moaned.  "Oh Miss
Priscilla, the switch will hurt my legs dreadfully.  I am so sorry to
have disobeyed you."

"Then I will only give you two cuts across the calves dear.  They will
help you to remember in the future that so long as you are wearing the
delicate thin stockings and clothes of a fashionable young lady, you
had better obey orders at once.  Out with them!"

My face twitching with fear, I extended my trembling legs.  "Join the
ankles, arch the insteps gracefully!"

I obeyed and with two quick strokes Miss Priscilla slashed my legs,
extorting shrieks from me.  For the whalebone curved round my legs, bit
into my calves and tortured me terribly.

"Now perhaps you will put your satin slippers up on to my knee," she
said kneeling again in front of me.

I obeyed and she wrapped the batiste drawers round my slippers rightly
making a pad of the lace frills to protect my diamond buckles, and then
with a satin ribbon she tied my feet up in a parcel.

She resumed her seat and pulled me over her knees again on my face.
She raised her gloved hand and began smacking me again with all her
might.  I shivered and prayed for mercy, in vain.  The tears filled my
eyes.  Nor were the pain and disgrace all I suffered.  For while she
smacked me she lectured me, and every word seemed chosen to inflame me
and trouble my passions.

"What a dignified position" - smack - "for a young lady dressed in the
extreme of fashion - "smack, smack.  "To lie across a lap, her white
shoulders rising from an exquisite dcollet frock, her gloved arms bound
behind her, her satin skirt turned back, her smartly shod feet muffled
up in her drawers" - smack, smack, smack, smack, - "while an old woman
whom she despised," - smack, - "slaps her naked flesh," slap, slap,
slap.  "What a disgrace," smack - "If you only knew how ridiculous and
pretty you looked with your high satin-covered heels sticking out from
the lace frills" slap - "of your elegant drawers," smack, smack.

The tears ran down my face.  I was being treated like a child.  I
sobbed like a child.  Yet all the while I knew that I was not a child
at all.

She finished at last, stood me up, drew up my pantalon and fastened the
strings about my waist, loosening my corset and dress to enable her to
do it.  Oh how ashamed I was.  How I blushed to feel her hands dressing
me as if I was a baby.

She laced me up tightly again, corset and frock, tied my ankles
together with a white satin ribbon tied in a big bow and passed through
a diamond buckle.  Then holding me, she made me hop in a most
humiliating manner back into my corner once more.

It was nine o'clock when I was first placed in the corner.  The clock
struck ten as Miss Priscilla put me back there, lifting up my chin,
drawing back my shoulders, adjusting my feet, turning out my toes as
much as my ankle strap allowed her to do.

"Now will you stand quietly dear?"she asked.

"Yes Miss Priscilla," I said humbly and still weeping.

"That's right, Denise.  You can't imagine how delicious you look
standing here tied up in your smart clothes.  Now remember Helen's
advice.  You are to think of your rounded insteps in their open-worked
silk stockings, your little feet in their lovely pearl-embroidered
slippers with the gossamer bows, the flashing buckles, the
extravagantly high-heels, peeping out from a nest of billowy white
frills of tulle and satin.  Think how you have been punished in them."

I wriggled my knees.

"Ah you are thinking of the dainty slippered feet," she said with a
smile.

That was her policy - a double one.  To punish me into abject
subjection and then to make my love and crave for punishment by
associating with it in my mind voluptuous images which provoked my
passions, and by flattering my girlish vanity with enervating,
effeminatizing soft words.  And she was succeeding.  I obeyed her.

I thought of my dainty high-heeled slippers shining and sparkling below
my satin dress, heel to heel as I stood in the corner.  The minutes
flashed by.  I was delighted to feel the height of my heels, to catch a
glimpse of my buckled toes, to realize that I must not move them, since
I was undergoing punishment at a woman's hands.  The clock struck
eleven to my intense surprise.  I had been standing for two hours in
the corner.  The door opened, Helen, Lady Hartley, and Violet Hind came
into the room.  I heard music and the sound of voices in the ballroom.
I longed to be free.

"How has Denise behaved Auntie?" asked Helen.

"She was troublesome at first.  She would talk.  So I took her pretty
pantalon down, tied up her feet in them so that she shouldn't break her
slipper-buckles and gave her a sound slapping across my knee.

I blushed with shame.

Violet cried "Splendid".

Miss Priscilla resumed.

"But for the last hour she has been standing very prettily in her
corner without a word."

Helen came over to me.

"Have you been thinking of what I told you darling?"

"Yes Helen," I replied blushing more than ever.

Oh how determined those two women were under all their loving terms and
dainty endearments to corrupt and make me of no account in their
sinister way.

"Then I will set you free as a reward." She did so and added.  "Now go
to the ball-room and dance and enjoy yourself."

I was delighted.

"But mind darling that you only dance with girls, she said with a
warning nod, and she explained to Lady Hartley:  "That is part of
Denise's punishment."

I was delighted to have an excuse not to dance with men, even as
humiliating an excuse as this was.  I went into the ball-room which led
out on the other side of the big drawing-room.  It was a beautiful room
with a perfect floor.  There were a good many people whom Helen had
brought up from the village; luckily more girls than men, so that I had
a still better excuse.  I was able to say that as I was staying in the
house, it was my duty to see that the visitors had partners.  I danced
with Violet, and Miss Hartley, and other girls, - and I loved it.  I
had been beautifully taught and I knew that I danced very well.  Violet
too, was a good dancer.  Oh to swing round in a waltz with her to the
sound of languorous music, our little slippers flashing in and out,
weaving and interweaving the steps yet never touching, - it was
delicious.  At midnight we all went into the dining-room to supper, and
were as merry as we could be.  Cigarettes followed.  Oh how sorry I was
when the guests began to go.  Miss Priscilla took me aside.  She bad a
new pair of long white gloves in her hand.

"You must have these put on Denise.  You have soiled those you are
wearing." She smoothed them over my arms, and buttoned them.

"Have you also soiled your slippers?"

"No, Miss Priscilla.  The ball-room floor is as clean as a new
tablecloth.

"Let me see!" I swept my frock aside and showed her my feet.  "Yes, you
need not change them," she said.

I had forgotten all about my punishment.  I saw Helen saying goodbye to
a crowd of guests at the drawing-room door.  I wondered whether she had
not forgotten it too.  I thought that if I could slip by up to my room,
I might escape altogether.  I tried to, but Helen saw me between the
heads of some girls she was shaking hands with and cried out
pleasantly:

"You mustn't go yet, Denise dear."

She continued saying goodbye to her girl friends but introduced into
her farewells in order to punish me for trying to escape, humiliating
orders which I had to obey before them all.  Her words ran like this:

"Goodbye Dora...  Come and stand beside me Denise - Must you really go
Iris?  - not like that Denise, but with your face to the wall of course
and your hands behind your back.  I shall see you to-morrow Mrs.
Rivers, shan't I? Are the heels of your dancing slippers neatly
together, Denise?"

All went at last.  Helen took me by the hand.  "Come with me," she
said.  There were only Lady Hartley and Miss Priscilla, and Lady
Hartley's daughter left in the drawing-room.  She touched a spring in
the wall and a panel slid aside, showing another room of which I had
not guessed the existence.  The house had been greatly altered during
the years of my absence.

"This Denise," said Helen with a smile of anticipation, is the
punishment room."

Lady Hartley turned to her daughter.  "Wait here Phyllis," she said.
She followed Helen, Miss Priscilla, and myself into the punishment
room.  It was a small room, prettily furnished with a bright fire
glowing on the hearth.  Helen closed the panel as soon as we had
entered and at once it appeared that the room had no door to it.  It
was furnished in mahogany and white satin.  On the floor a thick carpet
covered with white glac-kid made luxurious walking.  The walls were all
thickly padded with white satin and the light was only admitted through
a skylight over which at this moment heavy curtains of white velvet
were drawn.  Of the designation of the room at a first glance no one
would have guessed.  At a second, one would have noticed some sinister
particulars.  Across the ceiling a grooved gilt wheel ran on a strong
rail and from the groove of the wheel, a thick strong gold rope
depended.  The wheel was worked by a small lever in the wall and at
this moment was in a corner of the ceiling with the rope tied to a
hook.  On the ottomans and chairs I noticed a gleam of steel rings and
bars, and one long flat sofa was furnished at the end with a pair of
stocks.  There were cases with glass-doors fixed against the walls and
glancing into one, I saw a stand of bamboo canes, into another a stand
of birches daintily tied with blue and pink satin ribbons, and into a
third, handcuffs and fetters and irons of all kinds in polished steel.
I was afraid.  But what most terrified me was a mahogany chair raised
an inch or two from the ground on a solid frame.  It was luxuriously
padded and cushioned in white satin.  Yet its aspect appalled me.

Sit down dear, said Helen pushing me towards it.  I advanced timidly in
my satin slippers, mounted the frame and sat down in the chair.  Helen
fixed a strong satin strap round my waist, buckling it tightly behind
the chair.  To the back other straps were attached, and these she
fastened over my shoulders, drawing them tight under each arm.  My body
and bust were thus securely imprisoned.  The chair was furnished with
short arms thickly padded in white satin and an inch or two beyond the
extremities of the arms two strange square boxes of glass were
supported on steel pedestals fixed into the frame of the chair.  On the
sides of these boxes facing the arms of the chair were holes thickly
padded with white satin for the wrists, the upper part of the glass
sliding upwards in grooves to admit the hands.  The other sides and the
bottom of the boxes were covered with looking-glass and little bulbs of
electric light placed at the corners, flung a strong light upon the
interior.  The top surfaces of the boxes like the sides facing the
chair were of glass.  Helen lifted up the sliding portions of the
glass.

"Lay your arms flat upon the arms of the chair, Denise darling, so that
your hands are in the boxes, and your wrists rest in the glass
grooves," she said in her most honeyed accents.  "The palms of your
gloved hands uppermost dear."

I obeyed her in dreadful alarm.  Lady Hartley looked on in delighted
curiosity, while Miss Priscilla strapped down my elbows and forearms
with satin straps to the arms and rested in the glass holes of the
boxes, my hands being quite inside the boxes.  Helen then slid down the
upper pieces of glass, and made them fast by locking a steel bar along
the tops.  My wrists were now hermetically imprisoned in these glass
pillories.  I could twitch my kid-glove fingers inside the boxes, and I
did so, making the brilliant light play upon the smooth shining white
kid-gloves.  But I could do no more.

In front of me at the end of the frame, supported also upon steel
pedestals, was a bigger box of the same make as the boxes for the
hands.  Only in this bigger box there were holes for the ankles a
little apart from each other and raised so that with my feet in the
boxes they would be in a straight line with my knees as I sat in the
chair.

"Raise your legs dear, and insert your dainty feet, said Helen.  She
flung back my skirt exposing my silk stockinged legs, my garters, and
the frills even which decorated my knees.  Timidly I raised my legs and
inserted my feet into the box, letting my legs rest in the grooves made
for them, while Helen held up the upper slide of glass.  As soon as my
legs were in position she slid down and secured the glass, tightly
fitting me into this strange pair of glass stocks.

My legs fitted very tightly into the holes just where the calves began
to swell, so that my ankles as well as my feet were enclosed in
glass-boxes.  Helen turned on the lights in each of the boxes and at
once a flood of bright illumination sparkled on slippers and buckles,
stockings and gloves, and flung up the dazzling reflections of the
dainty things in the most fascinating way.  Then Helen by means of a
little silver knob on the outside of each box drew out for an inch or
two the mirrors which formed the bottoms, and disclosed shallow
cavities underneath.  At once, from these cavities a brown dust whirled
out and flew about the boxes as if driven by a wind.  The brown dust
settled on my shining white gloves, my smart glistening slippers, my
gleaming stockings of silk.  I could move my fingers.  I could also
work my toes and insteps up and down though I could not twist my feet
from side to side.  I worked both hands and feet to shake the dust off
in vain and then I felt two or three sharp pricks on my insteps and
others on the palms of my hands at the small opening of the gloves.  I
shook my hands and feet more violently and then I began to feel the
pricks all over my ankles and feet wherever my stockings were
open-worked and all over my hands too.  Meanwhile the little clouds of
brown dust spun about the boxes.

A suspicion of the truth dawned upon me.  I was seized with a dreadful
irritation wherever the dust touched my flesh.  I could not lean
forward, for I was strapped firmly back in my chair.  But I fixed my
eyes upon my twisting fingers, my twitching feet; and I discovered the
truth.

"Oh, Oh!" I cried.  "Helen, the specks of brown dust are fleas.  You
are punishing me in my new kid-gloves, my satin slippers, my dainty
stockings with fleas!  Oh!  They torture me.  It's horrible."

And in a frenzy I worked my feet, I twisted and clenched my fingers.
It was of course all in vain.  My ankles, my insteps, my hands were at
the mercy of these obscene insects and they simply devoured me.

Lady Hartley was in raptures.

"What a delightful punishment for a pretty girl!" she cried.  "To tie
her into a chair in her lovely evening frock and then to give her
satin-slippered feet and slender little ankles in their exquisite
stockings to fleas to devour and punish!  I think you are wonderfully
clever, Miss Deverel."

Helen smiled in acknowledgment of the praise.

"It is at all events an appropriate punishment," she answered modestly.
"Denise is being punished for her vanity in making a coquettish display
of her little buckled slippers and dainty feet.  To hand them over in
their finery to fleas seemed to me the best way of teaching her
humility."

They stood and complacently watched me as I writhed and twisted in my
bonds.  The fleas were driving me mad.  They got inside my stockings,
down under my slippers, round my ankles and bit me terribly.  They were
ravenous.  My hands too were helpless.  The fleas were inside my
gloves, between my fingers, everywhere.  My feet and hands twisted in
their glass prisons.  The mirrors reflected back to me with irony my
flashing buckles, my dainty bows and heels, and the tightly-fitting
elegant long gloves.

"Oh, oh!  the torture is excruciating," I cried.  "Oh Helen you are
cruel!  I am being eaten up.  The irritation is driving me out of my
senses." I burst into tears, I tugged at my legs and arms to break the
glass and free myself.  I felt the blood rush to my face.  I was
growing delirious.

"It's a disgusting punishment," I moaned.

Helen laughed.

"Is it indeed Denise?  I don't allow young ladies to use such language
about my punishment which I feel it my duty to inflict upon them.  If
the fleas are disgusting to your delicate sensibilities, what I wonder
will you say to this?"

Into the tops of the glass boxes little silver boxes were let in, one
over each gloved-hand, one over each satin-slippered foot.  Helen
touched a spring in each of these boxes and the bottom which in each
case was inside the glass box fell down upon a hinge.  And to my
inexpressible loathing from each box there dropped a horrible fat, big,
slimy worm.  There were four of them.  One dropped on to the kid-gloved
palm of each hand, one on to the pearl-embroidered toe of each of my
slippers.  I uttered a piercing scream of horror.  I suppose that it
was very feminine of me, but I couldn't help it.  The sight of those
loathsome fat worms on my pretty gloves and shoes filled me with
nausea.  I shuddered.  I felt that I was going to be sick.

"Oh take them off!  Take them off," I screamed.  I shook my hands and
feet in a panic.  Then the worms began to crawl!  Oh it was revolting.
They crawled over my toes leaving a disgusting brown trail of slime on
the dazzling sheen of my white satin shoes.  They mounted on to the
buckles and bows.  They were crawling towards my open-worked stockings.
Oh I should feel them on my flesh.  Perhaps they were poisonous too, I
thought in my panic.  They were crawling about my fingers as well.  I
touched one with the tips of my fingers as I closed one hand
spasmodically and the soft feel of it as it moved and wriggled caused
me to shriek again.

"Oh Helen!  Please set me free!" I moaned.  "It's a horrible
punishment."

The tears poured down my face.  My slipper-buckles flashed and mashed
in a thousand many coloured rays as I arched and bent my feet to shake
them off.

"That's a wonderful punishment," said Lady Hartley.

It appeals to the imagination as well as to the body.  Ugh!  The slime
on the dainty slippers and the shining tight white kid-gloves!  How
ashamed of herself Denise ought to be!"

I interrupted her with a yell.  One of the worms had crawled inside my
left glove and I felt it wriggling on the flesh of my palm.  It was
unendurable.  Then I felt something wet and soft crawling over my
insteps.  The worms were on my stockings, feeding on the silk and lace.
My screams redoubled.  The chair shook with my frantic struggles.  All
the while too the fleas were biting and torturing me!

Helen watched me complacently.  She was delighted with the success of
her bizarre experiment.  She listened to my sobs and screams, she
watched my tear-stained face revelling in my abasement and sufferings.
Then, with her hypocritical kindness, she said:  "The lesson, darling,
you have to learn is this.  If you were wearing high boots and thick
stockings you would not mind the worms.  Therefore the more daintily
you are dressed, the more careful you must be to be obedient and
modest."

I interrupted her sermon with a scream.  One of the worms had crawled
through the open-worked pattern and was inside my stocking clinging to
my flesh.  It was the last straw.  I went off into a fit of hysterics.
I screamed and laughed, and sobbed all at once.  My face flushed red
and was convulsed.  I was going mad.  Even Lady Hartley was terrified
by my appearance.

"She has been sufficiently punished, Helen," she said.

Helen took a little tube with an indiarubber ball at the end.  She
pressed the tube through a tiny hole in the glass closed by indiarubber
and only opening from pressure from without.  Squeezing the ball at the
end of the tube, she discharged into the boxes one after the other a
strong insecticide powder which at once killed the fleas and worms.
Then Phoebe stripped my stockings down my legs.  Helen released me from
the stocks, my gloves, shoes, and stockings were taken off and left in
the glass-boxes to be destroyed.  I was still sobbing bitterly, shaken
with convulsions and shivering fits and tortured by the irritation of
the flea bites.

Lady Hartley said good-night and went away with her daughter, while
Phoebe brought a basin of warm water in which some herbs had been
soaked and bathed my inflamed and swollen hands, ankles, and feet.

"There's no reason for you to go into hysterics, Miss Denise," she said
with a rough kindness as she knelt at my feet, bathing me.  " This
infusion will soon cool your legs, and remove the irritation, and
to-morrow morning there won't be a mark on your pretty white skin."

Helen herself was by this time a little alarmed.  She brought me a
large glass of champagne saying, "I did not realize how completely soft
and girlish you had become, dear."

"But you meant me to become soft and girlish," I said between my sobs.
"You and Miss Priscilla sent me to a girls' school for two years and
knew the system applied to me."

"Oh yes, darling," said Helen patting my bare shoulders affectionately.
"Of course, we meant to punish you by giving you permanently the
figure, the pretty breasts, and the lovely face of a girl and to please
ourselves by dressing you in exquisite clothes suitable to your looks.
But we did not hope that the system would be so delightfully successful
as it has been in changing your haughty spirit into a girl's timid and
shrinking disposition.  However we know now, and I promise you that we
will not punish you with the glass-boxes again unless you should make
it absolutely necessary."

"Thank you Helen," I said gratefully.  Even at the time I remarked a
strange and significant change in me.  I was not angry and resentful
because she had punished me and thrown me into hysterics.  I seemed to
recognize that she had the right to do what she pleased with me.

The irritation was soothed by the healing infusion of herbs with which
Phoebe bathed me; I recovered from my hysterics; my sobs ceased.
Phoebe dried my legs, and put on to them a fresh pair of silk stockings
and satin slippers and I stood up.

"I am very tired,"I said."I will go to bed."

"Before you go to bed Denise," said Miss Priscilla calmly, "you will
have to have a long conversation with me in my boudoir."

"Oh please not to-night!  I am exhausted."

Miss Priscilla was implacable.

"To-morrow you are to be dressed as a young gentleman again.  It is
necessary that our conversation should take place while you are still
wearing your girl's clothes."

I was worn out by the punishments and experiences of the day.

"Then I will wear girl's clothes for one more day," I said.

Helen laughed.

"Really dear, it is not for you to make bargains with us.  If you wear
girls' clothes to-morrow to please yourself, you will wear them as long
as I choose to please me."

"Oh Helen!" I cried piteously.  I did not know what to do.  The long
conversation I was to have with Miss Priscilla frightened me.  I was
too tired.  I was not fit for it.  I should say anything that she
wished me to say.  On the other hand if I were to agree that it should
take place to-morrow Helen might keep me dressed as a girl for another
year.  And I was to be a man.  I had a future.  But in front of my eyes
there rose the vision of the young girl I had seen in the mirror, with
her pretty face, her curls, her white throat, her beautifully gowned
figure, her gloved-hands, her feet in their little buckled satin
high-heeled slippers.  Oh I should not mind if Helen did keep me
dressed as a girl for a year.  I said, "Very well Helen!  I consent.
Miss Priscilla shall talk to me to-morrow and you shall keep me as a
girl until you are willing to let me become a man again."

I blushed, Helen rippled over with delight.

"Darling we'll make you happy," she cried and she kissed me.  "Even
to-night you shall begin to realize the privileges and liberty of a
pretty young lady.  You shall have a book to read in bed and can smoke
a cigarette before you turn out the light."

Phoebe took me upstairs, undressed and bathed me, put on a
lace-embroidered night-gown of batiste threaded with pink satin ribbons
and tucked me up in bed.  On a little table by the bed she placed a
glass of lemonade and some biscuits, a box of cigarettes and some
matches and my novel.

"Take care you don't set the house on fire, Miss Denise," she said,
"and turn out the light before you go to sleep."

She left me in my luxurious bed to myself.  What a delicious change it
was from the hard mattresses and strict discipline of the girls'
school!  I smoked my cigarette and read my novel.  Oh it wasn't such
bad fun being a young lady after all.

Chapter Five



A happy day.  My new boots.  Humiliated in a boot-shop.  A catechism
interspersed with punishments.  I am whipped, handcuffed, slapped and
put into the stocks.  Miss Priscilla punishes my satin slippered feet.
I give in an abject surrender.  I am suspended in the air while my legs
are flogged.  I end the evening with Violet.  Caned, birched and
blindfolded.

                              ************

I woke the next morning to find the sun streaming in at the open window
and Phoebe bringing a cup of tea to my bedside.  How delightfully
different everything was from the rigid severity of my life in the
girls' school.  My marble-tiled bathroom seemed a paradise on this
summer morning.  I was allowed to chose my own frock, and Phoebe
dressed me according to my choice in a short walking skirt and coat of
plain white silk with a white lace blouse which had a low baby collar
leaving my throat free.  With this cool dress I wore pale grey silk
stockings and grey suede shoes with moderately high Cuban heels.  A
belt of pink satin, a big straw hat and elbow-length grey suede gloves
completed the costume.  I went downstairs and had a walk in the garden
until the others came down.  Then we went into a delicious breakfast
with fruit and hot rolls.

Everyone from Helen to Doris was as kind to me as it was possible for
anyone to be.  Helen of course was pursuing her definite policy.  She
wanted me to enjoy my life as a girl, to love it.

After breakfast Doris was driven off in one of the motor-cars to her
school in the neighbouring town of Mark's Cross.  I was free from
tiresome lessons and long hours in the schoolroom.  I took up the
"Daily Mail" and settled down on a cushioned chair in the veranda with
a cigarette.  Violet who was a few months younger than I was sat down
beside me.  Helen joined us with a smile upon her face.

"What do you girls want to do this morning?" she asked.  "You won't
want to stay in and I should be very glad, since I am busy, if you
would drive down in the governess-cart together to the village and take
some messages for me."

"That will be jolly," cried Violet and she looked at me with a smiling
face.  "I shall love going out with pretty Denise."

"Then I will order the cart for eleven," said Helen.  You won't want a
groom with you.  You can always find someone to hold the pony in the
village."

What a change for me!  For two years I had never gone out except with a
governess who made us walk two and two and forbade us to talk.  Now
Violet and I were to drive alone!  Thus began a delightful day of
freedom for me.  The freedom was certainly tempered by some dainty
tyranny exercised by Violet.  But she was so sweet and loving that I
adored being tyrannized over by her.  For instance just before the time
when we were to start she came to me and said.

"I like your coat and skirt, dear,immensely.  But you have prettier
hats than the one you are wearing I am sure, and although those little
grey suede shoes and gloves are no doubt very comfortable I don't think
they are smart enough for you to wear when you go out with me."

"All right Violet," I said laughing and I ran upstairs to my room.  I
chose a very big Leghorn hat adorned with a broad ribbon of white
velvet on the crown tied with an enormous bow and a row of pink roses
to match my belt.  And I changed into white transparent silk stockings
with little new glac-kid white shoes, with sparkling buckles and high
Louis Quinze heels.  Instead of the grey suede gloves, I put on very
long delicate gloves of white glac-kid which disappeared under the
elbow-length sleeves of my white silk coat.  I took a pink parasol and
ran downstairs to Violet.

"Shall I do now Violet?" I asked.

She looked me over.

I extended a kid shoe.  Violet smiled in approval.

"Yes, buckles and high-heels suit you Denise.  You look delicious now,"
and she flung her arms round my neck and kissed me rapturously." Oh how
silly you are Denise to want to be a man again, when you are such a
lovely girl," she cried.

A groom was holding the pony at the door.  We got into the trap.
Violet took the reins.  I put up my parasol I and we drove through the
beautiful grounds to the Park Gates.  How I enjoyed the sunlight and
the fresh air and the country after being cooped up for so long!

The village was almost at the gates of the Park, but the Park itself
was two miles long.  We drove into the village and left the pony in
charge of a boy.

"Mind your pretty shoes Denise," said Violet as I got out.  "Don't
dirty them!"

"The pavement is quite dry," I said.

We delivered Helen's messages at the various cottages and at each one
got further proof of how much I, Evelyn Beryl, was detested and feared.
They were all so delighted at Violet's news that I was to be kept for
some time longer at the girls' school.

There was one cottage especially where the news was welcomed.  A little
old woman called Mrs.  Pettigrew and her big buxom daughter Lucy kept a
laundry employing six girls of the village, where all the house linen
of the manor - not the ladies' underclothing of course - was washed.

Sometime ago, just before I went abroad, owing to a statement of mine
that Lucy had been insolent to me, I had persuaded my father to take
away our washing from the laundry.  And Mrs.  Pettigrew was nearly
ruined in consequence and would have been altogether, had not Helen
given it back to her.  Mrs.  Pettigrew hated me naturally, and when
Violet told her that I was to remain at school, she laughed with a
vicious satisfaction:  "That's a blessed message of comfort for every
poor man and woman in this village," she cried.  'Tis kind of Miss
Deverel to keep him in the school."

She flung open a door suddenly and showed us horrible little dark room
at the back of the parlour.  "But that's where I would like to keep him
in his girl's clothes," she exclaimed passionately.  "All his life I
would like to keep him there fastened in a chair and feed him on bread
and water.  We could do it too.  Tell Miss Deverel, please Missy!  Me
and Lucy and my laundry girls, we could keep him safe and quiet in
there.  He wouldn't get away with these on his legs."

With a horrid laugh she held up a cruel pair of rusty fetters with a
very short and terribly heavy iron chain between them.  I was
terrified.  Her face was so threatening, her voice so passionate.  She
looked like a terrible old witch.

I glanced in alarm into the little dark room.

"Oh!  that would be dreadful punishment," I said.

"Ah you don't know him, Missy," Mrs.  Pettigrew replied.  "He's your
cousin I heard and he's nigh as pretty as you, if you'll excuse me.
But he's the cruellest conceited young gentleman!  That's where he
ought to be kept, in the dark room."

Violet had meanwhile taken the fetters in her hands and glanced at me
roguishly.

"I would like to see them on someone, she said, and weighed them in her
hands.

"Lock them on Miss Denise's ankles Mrs.  Pettigrew."

"Oh, no,"I cried in terror.  Once I had the fetters on, Violet might
take it into her head to lock me in the dark room.  I recoiled.  Violet
laughed:

"Quick Denise!"

"Oh Violet!"

"Obey me!  Stand here."

With trembling kid-gloved hands I raised my skirt, but Mrs.  Pettigrew
came to my rescue.

"The fetters want cleaning Miss.  They'd dirty the young lady's pretty
silk stockings.  It'd be a shame to lock up such dainty feet.  I am
sure those little white buckled shoes have never trampled on the hearts
of poor people."

The old woman came to the door with us.  "Tell Miss Deverel of my dark
room, hiss Violet!" she said warningly.  "Me and Lucy and my laundry
girls will keep him safe in his girl's clothes."

As we walked away, Violet burst out laughing.

"You had a narrow escape Denise.  Oh we must keep you as a girl.
Everybody loves you as a girl and everybody hates you as a youth."

"But Violet," I said, "I shall be quite different now.  I have had my
lesson."

I looked so remorseful and penitent that Violet suddenly kissed me on
the lips.

"You are delicious now at all events, Denise," she said, "and perhaps
Helen will keep you in petticoats for a long while.  Get in!"

I mounted into the governess-cart and sat opposite to Violet.  She took
up the reins.

"You won't want your parasol up Denise," she said, "so put your hands
behind your back and place your beautiful feet together, the smart
shoe-buckles level.  That's right."

I blushed and smiled and obeyed.  Thus we drove back to luncheon, where
Violet told Helen of Mrs.  Pettigrew's dark room and heavy fetters.
They all laughed except myself.  I was beginning to wonder whether
after all I should not be happier if I remained a girl.  After luncheon
Helen said to Violet and myself:

"I want you two girls to go into Mark's Cross and do some shopping for
Denise.  There is a Flower-show to which you can go afterwards if you
like to have your tea.  So go and get smartly dressed and I will order
the big motor-car for you.  I have some arrangements to make about the
new houses.

"Can't I help?" I asked.  Since the estate was mine I ought to look
after it.  Helen smiled.

"Of course not, dear!  Run along and put on a pretty dress."

I went upstairs humiliated by her words, but the humiliation did not
last long.  Violet and I were to do an afternoon's shopping.  We were
to have the big motorcar to ourselves, tea at the Flower-show.  The
prospect was delightful.  I put on a lovely trailing dress of silk
voile in vieux rose, tied well in below the knees with a scarf of tulle
and a blue hat with a crown of pink roses.  Violet was in dark grey
ninon with a grey satin hat.  We drove off in the luxurious big
motor-car to the neighbouring town.

"Show me your feet," said Violet.  I raised my skirt.

"As I thought," she said.  "You don't pay enough attention to your
feet, dear."

I protested.  I was wearing a very smart pair of brogued patent-leather
shoes laced with black silk ribbons tied in big bows on the insteps and
black silk stockings.

"These are lovely shoes," I said.

"For morning wear, perhaps.  How high are the heels?"

"I don't believe they are three inches."

"But Violet, heels too high look improper."

"Nonsense," said Violet.  "For the afternoon nothing looks so well as a
neat tightly fitting pair of dainty bright very high-heeled boots with
glac-kid legs which button over the ankles without a wrinkle.  Look at
mine!" She extended an exquisitely booted foot before my eyes.
"Luckily we are going to fetch some new ones which have been made for
you and I will have you buttoned into a pair before I take you to the
Flower-show, though really I don't know that we ought to go now."

"Oh Violet!" I pleaded.

"I don't see how I am going to find time to punish you for your
carelessness about your feet, Denise," she said.  "Take care that I
never see you again after luncheon without exquisite boots on your
feet."

Violet bought some hats for herself and for me and then we drove on to
Binot, Helen's bootmaker.

"You have been making some smart boots for this young lady.  Miss
Denise Beryl," said Violet to the girl who came forward.

"Oh yes Madam, some very pretty boots with smart heels.  This way
please."

She led us into the ladies' show-room upstairs and produced some
beautiful little new flashing boots with legs of black glac-kid which
reached up to the beginning of the calves, with dreadfully high and
slender Louis Quinze heels and with the edges escalloped round the
buttonholes.  She buttoned them on to my feet.  They were exquisitely
cut, fitting me tightly but not pinching me.

"But the heels are much too high."

"I like them," said Violet.

"They are only a little more than four inches high," said the attendant
calmly.  "Stand up, Miss, if you please," and I stood up.  "But they
suit you beautifully."

"I can't wear them really, Violet," I cried.

The shop-girl looked at me sternly:

"I think that young ladies who want to be slovenly and object to the
high-heels of their dainty boots ought to be punished in them."

"And she is going to be," said Violet resolutely.

"Stand up on your chair, Denise."

"Violet!"

"At once!  And hold up your dress to your ankles."

I obeyed.

"I will leave her under your charge in this position," said Violet to
the shop-girl.  "I shall come back in half an hour for her.  Will you
see that she doesn't move?"

"Certainly," said the shop-girl, arranging my feet with the heels
together and the toes turned out.  I had to stand on the chair for half
an hour in the show-room, while ladies came in and tried on their
boots.  Each one naturally asked what I was doing perched upon the
chair, and the shop-girl explained my fault.

Violet came back and took me to the Flower-show.  We had tea together
at a little table in the grounds.

"Show your smart boots dear," said Violet.  "Cross your feet in front
of you and let everyone see them.  You must be grateful now that I took
you to the boot-shop."

I blushed and said "Yes Violet."

I was girl enough to appreciate the admiration of the men and the
envious glances and disparaging remarks of the women.  We drove back to
Beaumanoir, and with some other girls who came in played tennis until
half past six.  Then Helen sent for me to her boudoir.

"You have had a pleasant day, Denise?" she asked affectionately.

"Oh Helen it has been lovely," I exclaimed kissing her.

"I am glad, darling," she said.  "Now run away, have your bath and get
dressed for dinner.  Phoebe is waiting for you.  I am going out to
dinner myself, but I want to see you looking your very prettiest before
I go.  Phoebe will bring you to my room.

Phoebe bathed and dried me, slipped on to my bare feet a pair of satin
slippers and led me back into my bedroom.  There she drew on and
buttoned a lovely pair of new tight white kid-gloves.  They reached
actually to my shoulders and were buttoned all the way with little
brilliants, while the seams on the back were embroidered in silver.
She put me into most wonderfully fine underclothing all threaded with
blue satin ribbons.  I wore one filmy petticoat, tight corsets of pale
blue satin, and a lovely frock of white satin covered with embroidery
of silver and diamonds.  Over this frock I wore a tunic of blue chiffon
through which the, silver-embroidered satin rippled like water.  The
corsage was extremely dcollet, the sleeves being mere shoulder straps
of paillettes and diamonds, and on the left side of the corsage a bunch
of big pink tea-roses was fastened.  The tunic reached to a little
below my knees, where it was caught with a clump of the same roses and
finished with a band of blue satin which held the dress in with a great
buckle in front, and was fastened behind with a large bow.  The skirt
was so tight and clung so closely to my figure that my legs were really
tied in it.  From the bottom of the tunic the white satin skirt with
its shining embroideries fell to my feet, but cleared the ground all
the way round.  With this I wore exquisite transparent white silk
stockings through which my flesh showed pink, with lace insertions and
diamond clocks, which since the skirt was short were easily seen.  My
slippers were of plain white satin, pointed and deliciously cut without
bows but with oval diamond buckles, and heels over four inches high.  A
blue ribbon of satin filleted my hair.  Earrings of diamonds and
pearls, a rope of pearls around my shoulders, a string of diamonds,
with a diamond pendant round my throat, diamond bracelets over my
kid-gloved wrists completed the lovely dress.  Phoebe gave me a little
fan of ivory and lace which sparkled with brilliants.

"Now you are ready," she said, "and I am very proud of you Miss Denise,
I can tell you.  Stand still." She placed one strong arm round my
waist, and the other under my knees and lifted me up in the air as
though I were a baby.

"What are you doing Phoebe?" I cried indignantly, while I wriggled in
her arms.  "I am not a child.  Put me down on the ground at once."

Phoebe held me still tighter.

"Keep still Miss Denise, and hold your silly tongue or I'll punish
you," she said sternly.  "I am obeying my orders.  Your hands behind
your back at once."

I was waving my luxuriously gloved hands in protest, but at the sound
of her peremptory voice I obeyed her.

"That's better," she said.  "Now press your ankles and feet together!
Arch your insteps.  Make the most of your beautiful buckled slippers."

Blushing with shame I obeyed her again.  I could see myself in a mirror
held in her arms, a grown up young lady in a lovely evening frock I
could see my girl's feet in their high-heeled satin slippers obediently
placed together with the insteps arched, and my legs dangling down over
her arm.  Phoebe carried me along the corridor to Helen's bedroom and
kicked at the door.  Helen's French maid Leonce opened it.  Helen was
dressed in an exquisite long gown of pale green chiffon over white
satin.  She turned with a smile and pointed to a strip of white kid
between two mirrors.

"Place Miss Denise on her feet there."

Phoebe set me down.  Yes I had never looked so well.  My blue tunic
with the silver embroidered white satin underdress set off my fair hair
and skin to perfection.  I was happy too.  There was a colour in my
cheeks, my eyes sparkled.  I had had a joyous day of fresh air,
exercise and freedom, and now in my delicate underlinen, and dainty
frock, dressed for dinner.  I was conscious of a voluptuous feeling of
well-being and delight.  My dress was short enough to give a glimpse of
pink insteps in shimmering cobwebs of white silk stockings and to show
my feet which in their slim little glistening pointed slippers without
embroidery or bows, but with only the big oval diamond buckles for
ornaments, looked more slender and elegant than ever.

"You look sweet dear," said Helen.  "Let me see how prettily you can
walk in that frock!"

A strip of white kid was unrolled on the floor by Leonce.

"Keep on the strip," said Helen; and I walked, turned, and came back,
pointing my toes and flashing my slipper-buckles.  The dress rustled
deliciously about my ankles, and I could take only the tiniest steps.

"My skirt is so tight that my legs are really tied together," I said
smiling at Helen, "and I have an extra half an inch on my Louis Quinze
heels."

"I know," replied Helen.  "But they look lovely.  And after all you are
not going to play tennis in that pretty frock.  In fact darling I am
going to tie you still tighter."

She was smiling radiantly.  She held in her hand a white satin strap
with a diamond buckle.

"Sit down on this chair, and give me your beautiful feet.

I had learned enough to know that obedience must be prompt.  I extended
my feet to Helen, who kneeled on one knee and took them on to the other
knee.

"But Helen, what have I done?" I asked.

"This isn't punishment dear," she replied as with her white-gloved
hands she delicately crossed my slim ankles.

"But it is very, very important that there should not be the slightest
mark even on the white soles of these exquisite new high-heeled
slippers when you have your conversation with Aunt Priscilla."

Why I wondered?  She adjusted the gleaming strap round the crossed
ivory ankles and bound them daintily but tightly together.  Oh how
delightful the sensation was!  The blood rushed into my face.

"Now to keep your gloves clean." She tied my hands in the same way.

"There, darling, now we are certain that you won't walk and soil the
shoes," she said.  "Be very obedient to Aunt Priscilla." She kissed me
and Phoebe once more lifted me in her arms.  The voluptuous thrills
which had been coursing through my veins redoubled.  With my white
shoulders and bosom rising from my delicious dcolletage I looked in
Phoebe's arms like some wonderful doll, except that my bosom heaved
rather spasmodically.  Phoebe in order not to ruffle or tear my dress
had raised the skirt, so that not merely were my buckled feet and
crossed tied ankles visible, but my silk stockinged legs as well to
half way up the calves.  I saw myself in the glass.

"Oh Helen!" I murmured, my eyes swimming with languorous vague
longings.  I was pricked by desires witch I did not understand.  A
world of them were expressed in my sigh.  Helen smiled.  It was her
policy and wish to keep me to-night of all nights stimulated by
passionate yearnings.  She provoked and increased them now.  She
caressed with kid-gloved hands my legs, sliding her hands up over the
smooth shining stockings under my dress to my knees and garters.

"The garters are of white satin dear, with big bows and buckles?" she
asked.

"Yes Helen,"I answered blushing.

"You are very happy to-night, Denise, aren't you?"

"Oh yes, Helen."

Phoebe carried me downstairs to the drawing-room and placed, me on a
sofa propping up my back with cushions, and drawing down my dress so as
to cover my ankles.

"Now lie like that!  Don't put your feet to the ground Miss Denise,"
she said.

"I won't, Phoebe."

I was left alone, and in a few minutes Violet came in looking very
pretty in a white gown of ninon de sole.  She leaned over the sofa and
looked down at me.  A tender snide and a blush came upon her face.  Her
little gloved-hand caressed my satin slippers.

"Do you know, Denise, that I am falling in love with you, - not because
you are a youth at all, but because you aren't, because you are a girl.
I am in love with you just as girls are with one another," and after
this strange utterance which excited me and flattered me, she cried.

"Oh, you have got your hands and feet tied!  How delicious!  I must
look." She turned back my frock, and asked me why.  I explained.

"I wonder what Miss Priscilla is going to do to you to-night," she said
slowly.  "I am jealous of her."

She bent her head down and kissed my lips a long ardent kiss.  Then she
drew a breath of pleasure and I smiled.

"Violet, that was lovely," I said.

She bent down again passionately, lifted my bound feet and I felt her
warm lips pressed upon my insteps.  Oh a delicious spasm of emotion
shook me.  My hands tied in front of me in their gleaming smooth
kid-gloves fluttered.  Oh, how my passions were excited!  Doris and
Miss Priscilla dressed in a high-necked black silk robe and flat
square-toed shoes, joined us.  Netta announced dinner.  Phoebe carried
me in and placed me in a chair and freed my hands.  A clean white satin
footstool was placed under my bound feet and we dined.  How I enjoyed
that dinner.  I had Violet on one side of me, her kiss seemed still to
burn and tingle on my insteps and at times she dropped her napkin, and
as she stooped down to pick it up, she would give an affectionate
squeeze to my slippers or legs.  Even Miss Priscilla's face looked
pleasant.  I was carried back to the drawing-room where Violet and I
were allowed a cigarette over our coffee.  Miss Priscilla rose.

"I shall send Phoebe to bring you to my boudoir in five minutes
Denise," she said.  "I am just going to see that all is ready.
Meanwhile put on your gloves and button them carefully.  Perhaps Violet
Will help you."

"Of course I will," cried Violet.  She kneeled by the sofa and with
caressing fingers drew on my long delicate shining gloves and buttoned
them up to my shoulders, smoothing them over my arms, so that not a
wrinkle should show.  Then she pressed my hands passionately.

"I should love to tie them together, just as your feet are tied, only
ever so much tighter."

I blushed.

"You may if you like," I said eagerly.

"There's no time now.  Someday when we are alone I Will."

"But Violet, you said you loved me," I remarked with a smile.  She
frowned in perplexity.

"I do too Denise.  Yet, yet, do you know what I would really love.  I
would love to see you dressed just as you are now in that beautiful
evening frock tied to a chair in Mrs.  Pettigrew's dark room with those
buckled satin slippers and slender ankles in the chains, while the
laundry girls fed you on bread and water.

My face grew scarlet.

"Oh Violet, that would be dreadful," I cried, and yet the picture her
words evoked fascinated me strangely!

Phoebe came in for me and carried me up the stairs to Miss Priscilla's
boudoir which was furnished in the Empire style with an elegance out of
keeping with her Puritanical appearance.  A small fire was burning
cheerfully and to keep the room from growing too hot, the window was
open upon the summer night.

"Untie hiss Denise's ankles."

I was placed standing in a blaze of light on a square of white kid
between two great mirrors, so that I could see myself back and front.
Miss Priscilla drew up a chair and sat facing me, but a little on one
side so as not to obscure from me my reflection in the mirrors.  Phoebe
went out of the room.

I was excited.  I was a little frightened too.  I looked at Miss
Priscilla timidly.  She crossed one leg over the other, showing me her
ugly flat shoes and lisle-thread stockings.

"Lift your dress Denise!  A hand on each side of your skirt!  Lift it
prettily above the ankles.  That's right.  Press your high-heels
tightly together and turn out your toes!  That will do.  Now watch your
pretty reflection in the mirror, while I talk to you and above all
never lose sight of your slipper-buckles and your beautifully shod
high-heeled feet."

I blushed rosily and smiled "Very well, Miss Priscilla."

"Now listen to me Denise!" she went on, "some day you will be allowed
to lay aside your dainty frocks.  I think it's a great pity, Helen and
I are determined however that we will not have a repetition of your
outrageous conceited conduct, of your untidy ways, and your
disrespect."

"I am cured of that Miss Priscilla," I said humbly.

"Perhaps," she replied calmly," but we mean to make certain of the
cure.  We mean that you shall always willingly sub