Miss High Heels

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 submit to the rule and authority of women.

"Always?" I asked in dismay.

"Always."

I hesitated.

"Miss Priscilla!"

"Yes."

"It seems natural to me that I should be kept in subjection," I said timidly, "so long as I am wearing girls' corsets and long gloves, earrings and pearl necklaces and dcollet dresses, girls' frilled lingerie and pretty petticoats, girls' silk stockings and satin slippers with high-heels. I don't resent discipline at a lady's hands while I am to dress in this way."

"Come that's better. You are improving Denise."

"But when I go back to trousers it would be so undignified to be under a woman's authority, especially a young woman's like Helen."

"You can easily escape the indignity by remaining in your satin slippers."

"I know," I said weakly. "But I must be a man. I must have a career."

Miss Priscilla laughed.

"Meanwhile, Denise, even in your satin slippers you are not as obedient as you profess your willingness to be. For you are looking straight at me instead of at the reflection of your diamond buckles."

My eyes sought my feet in the mirror.

"I am very sorry. I forgot." said I humbly.

"That is no excuse Denise," said Miss Priscilla placidly. "Gather in your pretty frock, until it is stretched quite tight over your behind, and bend double."

She rose. Red with shame I obeyed her.

"I can't whip you with a cane Denise, for a cane would tear your fragile dress. But this will be quite as effective."

She took up a very thick short stick of rubber covered with white satin. It was like a policeman's truncheon, except that it was flexible.

"Bend well down. Your skirt tighter. Gather it in with your kid-gloved hands, dear."

Oh, how ashamed I was to be punished in this humiliating childish way in my lovely clothes, yet I felt a thrill of sensuous pleasure.

Miss Priscilla calmly ran her hand over my stretched bottom, as I stood bent double, tightening the glittering skirt still more and making me gather it in with my dainty white gloves, until there was not a wrinkle or a pleat.

"We will punish the right globe first," she said. One, two, three, four," and at each word the elastic stick danced upon my bottom stinging me dreadfully.

"Oh, Oh! Miss Priscilla. It hurts worse than the cane. Oh!"

"I know. Keep still! Five, six."

She held her dress aside with her left hand. I saw her common flat shoes and cheap stockings. How extraordinary and bizarre it seemed that an elderly skinny woman dressed so humbly, should be whipping the posteriors of a beautiful luxuriously dressed girl who was stretching her pretty frock with her kid-gloved hands to receive the punishment. She flogged me methodically now upwards from the underpart of the hips, now downwards from the back. The pain was intense. My eyes fined with tears, the tears rolled down my cheeks. I sobbed.

"You are moving your satin slippers Denise," she said. She stooped and put my heels and ankles together with her hands. "Watch your diamond buckles! Each time they flash, I shall add three more strokes."

"Oh, Miss Priscilla," I wailed. "Please tie my ankles together then. I can't help moving, the pain is so dreadful."

"I shall not tie your ankles Denise," she said. "You must stand quite still of your own free will while you are being punished. Now for the left globe. One, two. I screamed.

"Three, four,- yes, this is the weapon, Denise, to bring fashionable young ladies in dainty frocks to their senses." Smack, smack, my bottom danced and writhed. "This will teach you obedience, pretty Miss Satin-Slippers."

Smack, smack. She fairly cooked my flesh, up and down and now across, smack, smack fell the heavy-elastic stick on the thin delicate skirt. "High-heeled young ladies," bang, bang, "are all improved by a good whipping on their haughty impudent flesh," slash, slash, slash, slash.

"Now perhaps you will watch your shoe-buckles, will you?"

"Oh Miss Priscilla, I will, I will," I screamed.

"Good!" Smack, smack! She laid the truncheon aside. "Now stand up Denise."

She contemplated with pleasure my tear-stained face, my quivering bosom.

"Now loosen your frock but take care that it doesn't fall over your ankles."

"Yes, Miss Priscilla," I jerked out between my sobs.

"And mind that you don't move your pretty buckled satin slippers.

She dried my eyes with her handkerchief and resumed her seat.

"We will go on where we left off. You are to be made a willing slave to woman's authority. The one certain method to make you that, is to make you love your subjection. It is obvious that you do that to a great extent already. It is quite clear that you love to be punished in your pretty frocks even though the punishment costs you pain and tears. But to make that love the overwhelming influence of your life, it is necessary that you should be made to associate in your mind supreme pleasure with a picture of yourself, dressed by women's kid-gloved hands, in girls' corsets and frocks, girls' smart long gloves, and silk stockings, girls' high-heeled dainty slippers and then with the delightful sensation of exquisite lace-frilled lingerie. Therefore answer me this question. 'Have you ever loved a woman?'"

"No, Miss Priscilla."

She nodded her head with satisfaction.

"Have you ever enjoyed a woman?"

I was scarlet with confusion. I felt too that to answer the truth, "NO", would be to give her somehow a hold on me which would he dangerous.

"You must not ask me such questions," I said.

Miss Priscilla rose never losing her temper.

"Bend down again, Denise! This time we will raise the dainty skirt altogether and whip you over your thin pantalon."

"Oh Miss Priscilla, I will answer."

"When I have whipped you Denise."

Miss Priscilla was implacable. My tears were hardly dry, my skin still burned terribly, yet I must bend down and suffer the punishment again only in an acuter form. I bent down. Placidly she lifted my skirt and turned it back over my shoulders, leaving my girlish big protuberance exposed in the batiste drawers.

"Now lift up the dress in front until the frills at the knees are exposed."

I obeyed her whimpering. She took up the elastic truncheon and stood behind me.

"Keep quite still, dear! Can you see your high-heels reflected in the mirror behind you?"

"Yes Miss Priscilla."

"Fix your eyes on your glistening slender satin slippers and I'll tan you thoroughly and well."

Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack, the thick rubber stick danced and jumped upon my batiste drawers. I screamed. It bruised my tender flesh; it stung and burnt me intolerably.

"The feet still Denise," smack, smack" or I will punish them too, "slash, slash. "There's nothing half so good for the dainty derrieres of satin-slippered young ladies as the stick." - slash, slash, slash, slash. "Up and down" smack, smack. "Oh these girlish globes can dance my dear as much as you like," smack, smack, "so long as the girl's buckled shoes are quiet."

She flogged until I yelled with pain, and the tears streamed down my face in floods and my white bosom strained and heaved. Then she stopped and carefully readjusted my dress. "Stand up now Dense! Hold your skirt as before. That's right."

Again she dried my eyes.

"Answer me now Denise. Have you ever enjoyed a woman?"

I answered through my sobs.

"Never!"

Miss Priscilla's lips smiled with contemptuous satisfaction.

"I thought that anyone so feminine as you would hardly be acceptable. But I wanted to be sure. Had you known a woman dear, you would have been more difficult for Helen and me to deal with. We should not have been able to mould you, or to write indelibly your subjection upon your character as upon a blank page."

Miss Priscilla settled herself in her chair with a look of satisfaction. I felt singularly helpless. I understood that every answer I made, so subtle were her questions, handed me over more and more to her to make me a slave. Yet if I did not answer I was cruelly punished until I did.

"I pass to another subject, Denise. When you have admired women, what is it in them that you have admired. When you think of women, of what in them do you think?

I was startled. No I could not answer her.

"If you don't answer immediately, Denise, I shall lock a bright little pair of steel handcuffs over those delicate white shining gloves."

My heart gave a jump. I blushed rosily - with pleasure. I saw the little white-gloved hands which so daintily held up my lovely frock. To have them handcuffed by Miss Priscilla! A divine longing filled me. I looked at my little buckled slippers of satin. Oh, to be handcuffed while shod in those fairy-like ball-room things.

The strangest sensations overcame me.

"If you handcuffed me," I said timidly and not replying to her question, "I should not be able to keep on holding up my dress."

"I will prove to you that you are wrong, Denise. She took up a shining pair of handcuffs, thin broad bands of steel linked close together. She actually was going to handcuff me. Oh, the expectation was delicious!

"Let your skirt fall. Now your hands together, palm to palm in front of you."

My arms and hands hung down at once in position, clothed from the shoulders to the finger-tips in the tight unwrinkled gloves of shining spotless kid.

She took my hands and round the wrists fitted the gleaming bands. What a stimulating picture met my feverish eyes in the mirror! An elderly sharp-faced woman, in a black robe, looking just as I should imagine a prison wardress might, chaining the exquisitely-gloved hands of her pretty young prisoner in her gala dcollet frock and dancing slippers of white satin. Click, click, the handcuffs snapped to. I was helpless. Then she took a long chain with a spring hook at each end. One end she snapped on to a ring on my left handcuff. Then lifting my skirt all round so that my ankles were left visible, she drew the chain tightly round me behind under the upswell of the thighs and fixed the other to the right handcuff. The chain did thus three things. It held down my handcuffed hands, bound my thighs and kept up my dress. I smiled at my reflection in the glass. I felt and looked so deliciously helpless. Miss Priscilla sat down again calmly watching me.

"Now Denise, perhaps you will tell me what you admire in women."

"Their feet and ankles," I replied shamefacedly.

A gleam of triumph shone in Miss Priscilla's eyes.

"Shod in what way, Denise?"

I hung my head. I had told so much, however I went on:

"In little smart patent-leather buttoned boots glac-kid legs and high Louis Quinze heels. In elegant patent-leather shoes laced with satin ribbons tied in big bows on the insteps. In little buckled high-heeled satin slippers."

Miss Priscilla nodded with satisfaction.

"Shod then, just as we keep you shod."

"Yes, Miss Priscilla."

"I thought so, I have watched you Denise. You are a ftichiste-du-pied."

So that is what the phrase meant! How well she knew me! I was dreadfully ashamed.

"But that is not enough, Denise. Don't twitch your pretty fingers. Let the chained hands rest quite quietly against your lovely frock. I have not finished with you yet. The mere sight of a lady's pretty feet in her dainty boots attracts your eyes, fascinates you, but it does not trouble your passions, as they were troubled last night when you stood in the corner. Am I right?"

"Quite right," I said in a whisper. "But oh Miss Priscilla, don't ask me any more questions: I am so horribly ashamed."

"I must ask them," she returned implacably. "You must remember that you are a girlish young gentleman of enormous wealth, enormous power, and responsibilities for which you are quite unfitted, and that Helen and I are responsible for you. If you ever obtained your liberty you would abuse your power. We are bound therefore to keep you in bondage and for that purpose I must know every detail of your character. Since ladies' boots on ladies' feet by themselves do not arouse and delight you, what does? Tell me at once.

"Miss Priscilla, I can't," I cried in despair.

She rose calmly.

"Lift up your head!"

I obeyed. Her hands were clothed in the long white kid-gloves which seemed the uniform of the house. She took the point of my chin in the fingers of her left hand and held it firmly. With her right palm she deliberately smacked my cheek with all her strength.

"So you won't answer, won't you," - slap - "You disobedient" slap - "impertinent" - slap - "girl!" slap.

"Oh, oh, oh! your kid-glove stings my face dreadfully, Miss Priscilla."

I struggled in vain to wrench my chin free from her fingers.

"It is meant to sting this pretty," - slap - "silly" - slap - "girl's face," slap slap. "These delicate soft cheeks," - slap - "want a lot of punishing I see."

Slap, slap, slap, slap. "Now we will make the other as red as this one is."

She began to slap my left cheek now in the same way. My hands were chained down to my legs. I could not resist. I burst into tears from the pain which I was suffering.

"Oh, Miss Priscilla, you are cruel!"

"Why don't you answer the questions then?" Slap, slap. "What a pity that I have to smack this pretty face and spoil its delicate complexion!" Smack, smack, smack. "Your satin slippers are moving, dear." Slap. "I shall have to turn my attention to the dainty glistening white feet in a moment." Smack, smack, smack, smack. "There that will do! You are as red as a dairy-maid, you silly girl."

She resumed her seat, while I stood and sobbed helplessly.

"What is it that chiefly enthralls and delights you, Denise?"

The question was asked again. Oh, through my tears, I had to answer it! I had to reveal that entrancing, shameful dream-world in which I used to wander.

"Being forced by ladies to wear corsets, long gloves, girls' frocks and little high-heeled girls' boots and shoes myself."

"Is that all?"

"And being punished in them."

"You are delighted now?"

"Oh Miss Priscilla!"

"Answer!"

"Yes."

"Did the idea, the thought of being put into girls' high-heeled shoes and corsets, and punished in them, excite you before it was actually done to you?"

"Yes."

"Since when?"

"Since I was a boy."

"What was the first occasion?"

The horrible catechism, making me reveal all my hidden fancies was getting onto my nerves.

"Of course, I knew that you longed for women to dress you in girl's clothes," Miss Priscilla continued calmly. I was astounded.

"You knew that?"

"I guessed it from your ways. It is not unusual in girlish youths. But it's important that I should know how the idea first came into your head."

"Oh Miss Priscilla I can't answer you. It isn't a fair question. I won't answer," I cried in a sudden passion.

"In that case," she said looking at me with a malicious smile as she rose from her chair, "in that case Miss Satin-Slippers must have her pretty face slapped again."

"Oh no Miss Priscilla! I can't endure it. I won't have my face slapped." I cried, and before she even raised a hand to touch me, I burst into a flood of tears and turned away.

"Stand still, Miss Satin-Slippers," she said implacably coming towards me.

"No, no I won't." I sobbed passionately, and I stamped my feet in a rage as well as the chain round my thighs allowed me to do, and tried to run away. She seized me at once, my hands were handcuffed, I could do nothing.

"How dare you move?" she asked in a quiet stern voice which frightened me. "Do you think that we dress you up in the finest silk stockings specially woven for you at ten guineas the pair and have your shoes cut and finished and buckled in the most exquisite style with the daintiest heels for you to stamp at us in them?"

At her quiet tones my anger vanished. A fresh flood of tears burst from me remorsefully.

"Oh, Miss Priscilla I didn't mean to be impertinent to you." I sobbed, and in a fit of penitence, I, the fashionably dressed Miss Satin-Slippers, as she termed me, buried my face in her bosom. She took me in her arms and patted my white bare shoulders soothingly.

"There, there Denise!" she said gently. "Don't pull at your handcuffs, dear, like that; you can't get them off and you will only spoil your nice gloves. Come dry your eyes."

She dried them with her handkerchief holding me affectionately in her arms.

"You forgive me, then?" I said imploringly.

She shook her head.

"You must be cured for your own sake, Denise, of these foolish fits of passion. You must recognize that you ought to have your pretty feet punished now before your face is slapped."

"Punish my feet," I exclaimed; a queer thrill of pleasure shooting through me even at that moment, as I looked down at them. "In these shoes and stockings?"

"Yes."

In the corner by the fire with its back to the wall stood a chair upholstered in white satin and gold, a solid chair with arms. To it was attached a pair of stocks for the legs. She placed me in the chair, turned back my skirt and opened the stocks.

"Put your legs in the grooves."

The stocks were of polished mahogany with the holes fined and padded - with satin, so that they could hold the legs in a vice and yet not tear the most delicate silk stockings. I put my legs in the grooves. She shut down and locked the upper plank of the stocks and wheeled one of the big three-sided mirrors in front of me. I could see my ankles and feet sticking out from the stocks in their dazzling finery of high-heels and diamond buckles and lace, and satin and silk. There was not a mark on the new white soles. They were the slippers of a wealthy debutante and I was going to be punished in them.

Miss Priscilla kneeled and took my right foot in her hand and in an instant piercing shrieks from my lips rang through the room. She bent down my instep until I was sure that the bones must snap. Then she twisted it to the right until I was certain my ankle must break, then again to the left.

"Oh please, Miss Priscilla, this is dreadful. It's torture! Oh, oh, my foot! You have lamed me for life."

But she was a doctor. She knew exactly how far she could punish me without breaking bones or spraining sinews. Then she clasped the leg just above the ankle in both hands and sawed her hands different ways pinching my tender flesh and provoking screams from me. Then she took the slippers delicately off my foot and whipped the sole with a little whalebone rod until I yelled again in a blinding storm of tears. She replaced the slipper and treated the left foot in the same way. She released my legs and said:

"Your feet won't forget that lesson very quickly, Denise. Stand up!"

Oh my feet are so tender.

She raised me. To touch the ground tortured me.

"Go back to your place. Will you stand quietly while I slap your face?"

"Yes Miss Priscilla."

She smacked me cruelly again until my cheeks were fiery red, and I thought my sobs would choke me.

"Now we will go back to business, Denise."

She sat down calmly in her chair.

"When did you first feel that you wanted ladies to dress you as a girl and punish you?"

"When my governess took me over her knee. I was seven years old. While she slapped me I was looking down and I saw just below me her feet which were very prettily-shaped and shod in elegant buttoned patent leather boots with high-heels."

Miss Priscilla nodded.

"I thought it would be something like that. You understand now, Denise, why we dressed you in girl's clothes and are subjecting you to discipline. If you loved the mere idea of it, how much more would the real thing appeal to you! How much more easily you could be subdued and held in subjection!"

Yes, the whole terrible plot which these two women had concocted to turn me into their willing prisoner was now revealed to me; yet I seemed incapable to resist it. Miss Priscilla rose, clasped my waist, caressed my bosom.

"You are not going to give us much trouble, Miss Satin-Slippers."

She took the handcuffs and chain from me.

"Stand in the corner until I am ready for you. Your face to the wall, your dainty heels together, your hands behind you."

I obeyed. I heard Miss Priscilla moving the furniture.

She led me out of the corner where I stood between the two mirrors. I now saw a high stool of solid mahogany. It was seated with a padded seat of white satin and at the edge of the seat, there were white satin straps to tie down the legs above the knees. In the front of the solid stool, a little bar of steel with a ring at the end of it jutted out for an inch or two just at the place where the ankles would be if anyone were sitting on the stool and a flat back padded with white satin and with arms stretching out in the form of a cross rose behind. So at the extremities of the arms little handcuffs were fixed to hold the arms extended.

"I think your stockings can be drawn tighter up your legs, Denise."

She raised my skirt and carefully straining the fragile stockings up over my knees, shortened the suspenders.

"Now mount on to the stool."

She placed a little gold footstool. I climbed on to the stool by means of it and sat with my legs dangling. She took away the gilt footstool. She strapped with a white satin strap my waist tightly to the back of the stool, and extending my gloved arms one on each side fixed them with the handcuffs to the cross. I watched her timidly.

"You need not be frightened, Denise. I am not going to hurt you."

She fondled my bosom with her kid-gloved hands and actually kissed me with her leathery lips. I was terribly excited. I waited in an extraordinary suspense. Then she tucked up my skirt in front and underneath me until my white satin garters with the big bows and buckles and the lace frills of my drawers were exposed. She strapped my thighs down together to the edge of the seat just above the garters, so that my knees showing delicately pink through the filmy sheen of the tightly strained stockings, projected a little beyond the seat and my feet hung down clear of the little steel bar and ring.

"Can you move them? Try!"

I saw in the bright light reflected from the mirror the round legs tapering down in their shimmering meshes of silk to the neat little ivory ankles and exquisitely-slippered slender feet. I tried to move them.

"I can only move my insteps Miss Priscilla," I said smiling. "I can make my shoe-buckles flash, that's all."

"I don't mind you doing that, dear. Watch your beautiful legs and feet!" She took the satin-slippered feet in her hands and began to caress and fondle them as she had fondled my breasts. Oh the feel and the sight of her hand in their white kid-gloves, playing delicately with my shining satin slippers, dusting imaginary specks from the bright buckles, toying with the heels, sent thrills of voluptuous pleasure through me.

"Isn't it ridiculous Denise," she said in a gentle insinuating voice, "to want to go back to heavy boots when you can attract everybody's admiration by the flash of your diamond buckles to the beautiful shape of your feet and ankles and the loveliness of your shoes and stockings."

I smiled and blushed.

"Perhaps, Miss Priscilla, "I whispered shyly.

"I am sure dear," she said.

Her hands crept up to my insteps, patted and tickled them, spanned the bound ankles, rose over the smooth diamond-docked stockings, pinched the calves affectionately, reached the knees. I was trembling from head to foot. I watched my legs and feet in a delicious expectancy. A mirror was tilted underneath them in such a way that the new white soles and satin-covered heels were reflected in the big glass and were made visible to me. Oh, the round soft legs in the shimmering gossamer of the tightly-stretched wonderful silk stockings, and the white satin strap binding them deliciously together at the delicate ankles! Oh the little feet in their feminine finery, the slim girl's slippers of glistening satin like the strap which bound the ankles, light, fragile, beautiful pointed slippers which ladies made me wear as a punishment! Oh, the arched insteps, the high curving narrow heels! Ladies had perched me up in them, as a punishment. Oh the blazing diamond buckles! Ladies had had them set for me, had sewn them on the exquisite slippers as a badge of subjection, and to attract all eyes to the loveliness of my feet.

Miss Priscilla seemed to read my thoughts. For as she fondled my knees, she said:

"Weren't we right to dress you as the lovely girl you are, should be dressed, Denise? Why should ladies put up with a clumsy youth in ugly trousers, when they can have a prettily-corseted long-haired girl tripping about the drawing-room in rustling tight satin frocks and light little high-heeled buckled satin slippers which are a positive joy to their eyes?"

"Weren't we right?

"Oh, yes, Miss Priscilla," I murmured languorously.

"And when we had dressed you and gloved you and corseted you, weren't we right to take the silk-stockinged legs and cross the dainty slippers and bind the ankles with satin straps and the gloved hands with handcuffs?"

I stared at the reflection in the mirror, the beautiful girl with the flushed face and wanton smile upon her red lips and the white satin high-heeled slippers with the diamond buckles fitting with such perfection over the glistening white silk stockings exposed, bound with satin straps and handcuffs at the mercy of this thin shrivelled old woman in the black plain dress.

"Oh you were right," I murmured languorously. Her caressing hands extorted the admission.

"Reflect," she said "that no lady would punish you with this treatment were you dressed as a youth. It is only because you are corseted and curled and white-bosomed and are wearing satin-slippers with high-heels that you are subjected to its exquisite degradation. Don't you love your subjection?

"Oh I do! I do!"

It was I, Dennis Beryl, the youth with the great fortune and the lofty ambitions who was speaking. But her kid-gloved bands caressed me. I could give no other answer. I gave up my will, my life to her and to Helen. I leaned towards her as far as my handcuffs and my bonds would allow. I was in an ecstacy. To live satin-slippered and corseted with handcuffed gloved-hands and strapped ankles in beautiful dcollet frocks - yes, I learnt that night from Miss Priscilla's hands that this was the supreme joy life held out to me.

"Keep me tied and daintily frocked! Oh Miss Priscilla thank you!" and I sank back with a drooping head.

Miss Priscilla sprang up with a cry of triumph. She freed me from my bonds, led me over to a sofa and stretched me out upon it on my back.

"I am going to cover your face," she said and she took up a large handkerchief. She gazed down with the utmost contempt at my outstretched form.

"It is all over with you now. Do you remember how you used to annoy me with your dirty shooting clothes and your heavy noisy boots? No more noisy boots Denise - ever! Only the daintiest little things of patent leather with slender taping heels for the future. We have finished with Evelyn Beryl."

I was floating back now into the ordinary world of men and women. I was ashamed. I moved restlessly.

"Lie still."

She covered my face and left me. I beard her moving the furniture again. She snatched the handkerchief from my face.

"Stand up Denise!"

Where the stool had been there was now a chair and above the chair a gilt rope with a strong hook at the end dangled down from a ring in the ceiling. The rope had until this moment been wound round a glittering chandelier quite close to the ring.

I stood up. Miss Priscilla rapidly unlaced my dress behind, took my arms out of the shoulder straps and let it fall in billowy daintiness about my feet. My one delicate petticoat followed.

"Oh what are you going to do to me?" I moaned piteously.

"I am going to make sure of things, Denise," she said significantly, but once more quite pleasantly.

I stood in my corset and pantalon ferm. She took two strong flat straps of white silk which were padded and thick in the middle.

"Open your legs Denise."

"Oh Miss Priscilla!"

I opened them. She passed the straps between my thighs; brought one round outside each hip and joined the four ends which had loops in the small of my back. Making me hold them there, she drew up my petticoat and frock, and passing the four loops outside the frock where it laced up the back, she dressed me again and fastened my dress. Thus I had each hip in a strong silk loop underneath my dress and the ends of the loops were outside my dress at about the middle of my back, held in position there by the lacing of the frock.

"Now your gloved-hands behind you!"

She fitted the bright steel handcuffs over my wrists and at the touch of them the old delicious sense of being helpless in a woman's hands returned to me.

Miss Priscilla intensified the feeling. For she turned me round like a doll, smiled pleasantly, and said, "You look very pretty and seductive Denise," and smoothed down my skirt.

Vague longings and desires were swelling up in me again.

"Mount up on to the chair Denise!"

I looked down helplessly at the glittering buckles on my dainty satin toes.

"I would if I could Miss Priscilla. But with my hands handcuffed behind me, my heels are too slender and high. And my stockings are so tightly gartered that I should tear them.

She patted my cheeks.

"I don't ask you to do impossible things Denise. I will help you."

She placed the gilt footstool in position and helped me up. Then she slipped the four loops of the silk straps which were outside my frock over the hook at the end of the strong gilt rope. She could just manage to do that, and the rope now held me standing on the chair. Miss Priscilla then raised my skirt up to my knees and with a delightful rustling of satin and chiffon gathered it in tightly at the back and fixed it up with a satin strap, leaving my silk-stockinged legs exposed from knees to toes.

"Now we will tie the dainty ankles together. Put the satin slippers side by side dear, buckle to buckle, heel to heel."

She bound my ivory ankles charmingly together, the padded straps supporting me, with the white satin ribbon which she had used before. She then drew up another chair and mounting on it, passed a strong band of blue satin matching the tunic of my dress round my breast and buckled it behind, enclosing the gold cord.

"There is one little final preparation Denise," she said. I was trembling with passion, with fear.

What was she going to do? I was afraid - but stronger than the fear was my delight in my ignominious position, in the tightness of the bonds about girl-gloved wrists and girl-shod feet. Miss Priscilla took a long new kid-glove.

"It will help to your subjection dear, if you associate your pleasure not merely with your feet bound in girls' high-heeled satin slippers, but with ladies' white glac-kid gloves. I want you to have the perfume of them in your nostrils."

She tied the glove over my lips gagging me daintily.

"There," she said as she stepped down. "Now you are ready, you pretty thing with the beautiful slippers."

She removed the chair and then pulled that on which I was standing from under me. I hung dangling in front of the mirror at the end of the gold cord in the air in all my lovely finery of a fashionable young lady at a ball. Oh, how deliciously bizarre the spectacle was. I had no fear now. The straps about my thighs were strong; so was the rope, and the broad blue satin belt under my bosom and round the rope held me upright. Nor did I feel any pain, the silk straps where they pressed on me were so padded.

"Now, darling, stretch your pretty feet down, the toes delightfully pointed. That's right, "and she took my insteps in her gloved hands and arched them delightfully.

"Now dear," she said as she slid her hands up my legs, pinching them caressingly, "I am going to flog these dainty soft calves in their glistening gossamer silk stockings with a riding-whip."

"Oh Miss Priscilla!" I murmured inarticulately through my gag. I had never felt so deliciously helpless as at this moment when looking into the mirror I saw myself bound hand and foot dangling at the end of a cord in my lovely dress with my poor legs in their delicate stockings and slippers exposed, and Miss Priscilla calmly swishing her whalebone riding-whip through the air. The sense of having nothing under my feet was extraordinary. The perfume of the kid-glove over my lips was intoxicating.

"Watch your shoe-buckles darling, while I punish you and strain the feet well down. You love hanging there at my mercy, don't you?"

"Oh I do! I do!"

The strangest thrills of voluptuous pleasure tingled through me. I pulled at my hands to feel more certainly the steel handcuffs. I twitched my toes and made my buckles flash to realize more completely, more entrancingly, the bonds about my ankles.

"Now then!" and swish, the riding whip slashed viciously across my calves. I uttered a cry of pain.

Again it fell. I drew up my knees to my chin in a spasm of anguish.

"I want you Denise dear to associate supreme delight not merely with your girlish finery and loveliness, but with pain endured while you look your girlish best. Three!" and a third time the little whalebone curled round the legs, stinging and burning them. Oh how I kicked. The shining slippers flashed in the air like silver, the slipper buckles like coloured flames, and again and again the cruel whalebone switch rose and fell. I burst into screams and sobs, I twirled and spun at the end of my cord seeking vainly to elude the cuts of her thin whip. And then my sobs diminished. I ceased in an extraordinary way to be conscious of the pain as anything but a delightful evidence of subjection. I saw myself in the dress and the dancing slippers of a fastidious fashionable young lady twirling in the air at the end of a rope with her dainty frock fastened up to her knees while a plainly dressed prim old maid flogged the round smartly-stockinged, tightly-bound legs. The bizarrerie of the position overwhelmed me. I pointed my toes, I strained my legs down to meet the blows. I was in a seventh Heaven; pain and pleasure were inextricably mingled. Miss Priscilla laid down her whip at last.

That will do, she said, contemplating with undisguised contempt my jerking helpless daintily clothed figure. "Your education Denise is I think complete."

She helped me down, removed the straps from my thighs, unfastened my legs and hands, took the glove from my lips and wiped my hot face. She gave me a glass of champagne, and then, with a disdainful smack on my bottom, she said: "Now take your pretty feet back to the drawing-room."

Ashamed I curtsied low to her and went out of the room. But the venom was in my veins. As I walked down the stairs, the rustle of my frock, the feel of it clinging delicately about my ankles, the gleaming buckles, the lightness of my slippers, the sensation of high slender heels all ravished me. Yes, I wanted to be kept in subjection as a beautifully dressed girl.

I entered the drawing room. Violet was alone reading a novel in an arm-chair. How pretty she looked in her frock of ninon de sole, her little slippers! Oh the venom was in my veins. For the moment I saw her young and pretty and dainty. I longed to be punished by her. Miss Priscilla had done her work.

"You have been a long time," Violet said peevishly. I have been here alone and it has been very dull.

She was annoyed. I smiled and blushed.

"What has Miss Priscilla been saying to you? Here was my chance and I took it.

I flung myself into a chair, crossed my knees and swung a satin-slippered foot indolently to and fro.

"You must find out, my pretty one," I said.

Her eyes flashed dangerously.

"Don't be impertinent, Denise. And uncross your legs at once! Put your heels together and turn your toes out and answer me."

I swung my foot more violently.

"I warn you Denise," she said.

I began to unbutton a glove with an impertinent smile.

"Very well. It is your fault Denise. Go and fetch me a cane."

She sat up sternly.

"A cane?"

I was horrified. I had not meant to provoke her to inflicting so severe a punishment. My legs stung me horribly. I wanted no more whipping.

"You will find one in the punishment room. Bring it here and be quick!"

My face clouded over.

"Oh Violet!"

"It's too late to plead for mercy. Be quick." Reluctantly I rose. I fetched a cane. Oh I had been a fool to provoke her.

"Hold out your hands straight from the shoulder, one on each side. Your feet prettily in position." And slash, slash, slash, slash, the cane descended alternately on each kid-gloved outstretched hand.

"I'll teach you to be impertinent Denise," slash, slash, - Violet was furious, her pretty face was convulsed with rage.

"Oh that's enough Violet".

"Not nearly," slash, slash, I burst into tears. Violet laughed triumphantly. "So you won't put your heels together when I tell you," slash, slash. "And you won't turn your buckled pointed toes out when I order you," - slash, slash.

"Oh Violet" I will, I will," I sobbed.

"Oh you will," slash. "Don't rub your knees together." - slash, slash. "Stand quite still, Miss High-heels, "slash, slash, slash, slash.

She flung the cane down.

"Your hands behind you."

She fetched two white thin cords of silk. And with one while I stood with my bare shoulders shaking with sobs, my pretty friend bound my hands together with a savage cruelty.

"Now kneel on the sofa."

She raised my skirts to help me. I knelt.

"Perhaps you will put your pretty feet and ankles together, now."

She tied my ankles, my high-heels and my insteps tightly together. Then she said. "Lean over the back of the sofa."

"Oh you are not going to cane me again."

"No, I am not going to cane you Denise," she said sternly, as she turned back my pretty frock and took my drawers down to my knees. "I am going to birch you do you understand, pretty fool. I am going to birch this white tender flesh," and she pinched it with her fingers.

"I am going to cover it with red stripes and wheals."

"Oh Violet."

"Silence."

She ran quickly into the punishment room and came out again with a terrible birch tied with pink ribbon.

"Oh Violet you couldn't be so cruel!"

She ran lightly over to me in her satin slippers. Oh a girl so pretty and so young couldn't mean to punish me so severely for so trivial a fault.

"Bend well over," and she flourished the birch and made it whistle in the air. I was helpless.

"Oh Violet, if you must birch me, please lock the door first and gag my mouth. I know I shall scream, and it would be so disgraceful to be seen tied hand and foot in my dinner-dress and being birched by a girl younger than myself," I said piteously.

"You don't deserve it Denise," she said. "But I love you darling, so I will spare you unnecessary humiliation."

She locked the door, carefully gagged my mouth and then tenderly kissed me.

"I am sorry Denise, but you must be soundly birched," she said and she took her place. How cold the air was on my naked flesh, how shameful my position!

"One, two, three, four." The twigs whistled through the air and slashed my tender flesh. I should have shrieked at the first stroke, had my mouth not been gagged. My bottom was already so tender.

"Is this your first birching Denise?"

I nodded my head.

"A virgin bottom!" slash, slash. "It's delicious to punish it," smack, slash, slash. She was like a young fury. "Fancy violating your bottom darling," slash, slash. "A regular rape isn't it?" she cried gleefully, and again the twigs fell. I twisted and writhed, my bottom danced and flinched, the tears streamed down my face. "Already the fat pretty soft thing is striped with red, dearest," slash, slash. "But you shall have a purple bottom before I have done with you," slash, slash. Her strength seemed to increase with each stroke. "A purple moon of a bottom to show to your friends!" slash, slash, slash, slash. "There's still a little white place here," slash. "And another here," slash. She flogged me daintily, carefully, never breaking the skin, but making it swell, covering it with bruises and wheals. And then once more suddenly my sobs began to diminish. I ceased to feel the pain. I was leaning over the sofa. Oh, oh! I was being punished in my satin slippers and silk stockings! That was the thought which took away my pain....

Violet finished.

"Now to wind up properly, I will give you six strokes with the cane across the thin soles of your pretty slippers." I could not protest, but I jerked and writhed in my bonds. Violet took up the cane.

"One, two. Oh I won't tear the slippers. I'll keep to the soles, you pretty vain creature! Three, four! I know your vanity was troubled lest I should spoil the dainty shoes. Five, six."

She untied my feet, and took the gag from my mouth. She led me on to a mirror holding up my dress, for my wrists she still kept tied behind my back, and showed me my posterior. Oh what a dreadful condition I was in. A few minutes before white and pretty, now a discoloured ugly thing with black patches of congealed blood, and purple stripes. It felt dreadfully heavy too, and the pain tortured me.

"Oh Violet," I exclaimed piteously "how could you spoil it!"

"It was good for you to have it spoilt," she said.

She fixed up my drawers, readjusted my dress, and put her arms round my waist. Her anger was all gone. She looked at my piteous face with gentle eyes. She dried my eyes affectionately.

"Kiss me Denise darling," and our lips for a long time clung passionately together.

"Stand there!"

She replaced the birch and the cane and picking up the fragments of twigs from the floor burnt them in the fire. Then she unlocked the door.

"Phoebe will know of course when she puts you to bed," she said. "But no one else need. Come here!"

She was folding a big white handkerchief I crossed the room to her timidly.

"You are not going to punish me any more."

"I am going to see darling whether you will now put your high-heels together and turn your dainty toes out when I tell you to. I am going to blindfold your eyes, stand you up on a chair with your face to the wall, just by the armchair in which I am sitting."

I blushed - but with pleasure. My eyes danced, my lips smiled. She fixed the bandage over my eyes and tied it at the back of my hair. Then she turned me round, clapped her hands delightedly and kissed me ardently on the lips. She led me to the chair. She guided my little satin slippers up onto it. She placed me in position. Then at my side she sat down in her arm-chair and resumed her book. I stood there for an hour blindfolded with my hands tied, and reefing every now and then her dainty little hand steal under my dress, touch my feet to make sure they had not moved, caress my ankles, play with my slipper buckles and high-heels. Miss Priscilla had done her work well that night. For the hour was an hour of bliss.

Chapter Six

My life, - my revolt. Exit Denise, enter Miss High-heels. An evening of humiliation. A terrible birching. My scarlet corsage. Helen's triumph. Evelyn disappears. A final scene after two years. The return from the Ball. The book ends with punishment and kisses.

It was Helen's policy to make my life as a girl delightful to me. The next few months were months of pleasure tempered by fits of regret and remorse. But the fits did not last long. I was surrounded with luxuries. I was spoilt. I had beautiful dresses, a horse to ride, Violet to run about with, dainty tyrannies to endure, a great deal of liberty, and exciting punishments. Miss Priscilla was extraordinarily fertile in her expedients. To mix pain and pleasure in an inextricable confusion in my mind, so that I should never be able to think great pleasure possible without an accompaniment of pain. This was her design. For once this belief was implanted in my mind I must always long to remain in subjection to my dainty tyrants. Thus I remember addressing to her a flippant impertinence at a garden party. She took me at once to the motor-car and drove home with me. I was dressed in a long trailing frock of misty dark grey crepe de chine, with a big grey satin hat to match trimmed with grey ostrich feathers and a bow of green ribbon. I was wearing black silk stockings and little high-heeled patent leather button boots smart and quite new. Miss Priscilla led me into the punishment room where a sewing machine stood. She strapped my feet in their smart boots into the treadles, pushed a long mirror in front of me and said: "Now get to work, Miss High-heels!" I began to work the machine.

"Quicker! Quicker!"

I obeyed. In the mirror I could see the little feet in their fashionable dainty boots flashing up and down, undergoing punishment.

"Still quicker!"

My thighs bruised one another. My face got red, but not merely with exertion and then in a delirium of passion, the feet raced up and down, a wanton smile shone in my eyes and on my lips. Miss Priscilla made me go on working the sewing machine in my dainty gown and fashionable bright buttoned boots for the rest of the afternoon.

But I must pass over the incidents of that time, the revenge which Lady Hartley's daughter who was jealous, deliberately took upon Violet and myself, the punishment of the velvet bag, the mask, the short frock, the dancing lesson, the mustard and the poultices. If my readers wish to hear more about the penalties which my tyrants in their ingenuity invented, they have only to say the word.

Meanwhile I hurry on towards the end.

In the autumn Helen gave a ball at Beaumanoir. I was dressed for the occasion in a plain exquisitely fitting long white velvet gown which molded my figure like a glove and fell in softly gleaming folds to my feet. A white satin sash about the waist alone broke the line. Diamonds and pearls flashed on white neck and shoulders, glittered about my white gloved-wrists, sparkled amidst my curls. My stockings of course were of the finest gauze silk and glittered with gems, while the fronts of my white satin slippers, which tonight had the heels raised to four and a half inches, blazed with diamonds and were finished with the daintiest bows made of diamonds. When my feet peeped out from the hem of my dress one saw two little sparkling shields of diamonds. When I showed myself to Helen before the dance she warned me.

"There's a great many coming to the ball, Denise, and very likely the ball-room will get hot. People no doubt will go out into the garden or on to the terrace between the dances. But you must not. Remember that! On a night like this, thieves may be lurking about the house, and you are wearing thousands of pounds worth of jewels. Your lovely little flashing slippers alone are worth a fortune. You wouldn't like to be kidnapped and robbed, would you Denise?"

"No," I replied with a shiver. "No indeed!" Yet I disobeyed Helen. Half-way through the dance I went out on to the terrace and smoked a surreptitious cigarette with Violet. As I returned through the glass door into the drawing-room I saw Helen. Worse she saw me. She beckoned me across the room to her.

She seized me by the hand and turned me with my face to the wall at her side.

"Your heels together at once Denise, and your hands behind you," she whispered in a savage voice, and to Violet she said, "You can go to bed at once."

Miss Priscilla in a dress of dark mauve satin with a chemisette of lace filling the bosom joined her. They waited until the guests had returned to the ball-room. Then Helen slid back the panel into the punishment room and pushed me in roughly. Priscilla followed and closed it.

"I am sorry," I faltered, "that I disobeyed you, Helen."

Helen was in a rage.

"Gag her," she said savagely to Miss Priscilla. A scarf gagged my mouth the next moment. They pinioned my elbows to my side and bound my hands in front of me with satin ribbons. I was dreadfully frightened. Helen was so furious. She was pale with anger.

"Stand up! Press your legs and feet tightly together Denise!"

I obeyed. The two women stooped and while Miss Priscilla gathered in my lovely velvet dress behind my legs, Helen with a strong carpet-needle actually sewed it up from my haunches to my ankles, spoiling the gown and sewing my legs together in a tight sheath of gleaming white velvet which revealed their contours. Oh there would be no more dancing for me to-night in my sparkling satin-slippers!

Then while Miss Priscilla supported me, Helen tied my ankles, which were exposed, tightly together with a satin ribbon and knotted it angrily.

A bright fire was blazing. They placed me on a chair close to it and then Helen at my side sat down on a stool.

"Take care that Miss Denise does not fall off the chair Aunt," she said grimly.

Miss Priscilla held me firmly by the shoulders. Oh, what were they going to do with me? I was helpless! Helen stooped, she lifted my legs rigid and helpless in their dainty gleaming velvet sheath and held out the strapped feet in their diamond-covered slippers close to the blaze of the fire.

"I'll teach these pretty high-heeled things to walk where I tell them," she cried and she held my legs firmly while the heat of the flames tortured my feet. I writhed and struggled.

"Yes, twist about Denise!" she said savagely. "A lot of good it will do you."

The perspiration burst out on my forehead. My slippers were scorching, my toes curled and twitched inside the slippers, the diamond bows and sparkling fronts flashed and glittered. I was helpless. I could not even cry out. The flames almost touched the soles of my shoes. The pain was terrible. I was on the point of swooning when they took me from the fire and stretched me out on a sofa for the rest of the evening. I did not recover the full use of my feet for a week.

Soon afterwards, a young and rising politician who had made his way without influence or friends came to our neighbourhood to make a speech. I went with Helen and Violet and sat upon the platform. The speaker had a great reception and made a magnificent speech. The cheers and enthusiasm of the meeting tortured me. If he, without help, could rise so soon to such a position, what a splendid career I ought to have with all my advantages! I returned home sad and discontented. I followed Helen to her boudoir.

"How long is this going to last?" I asked.

"How long are you going to keep me in girl's clothes, and rob me of my position?"

Helen looked at me calmly.

"Not a moment longer than you wish, dear," she said. "You shall come out of your girl's clothes now."

I was wearing a very pretty black velvet gown ornamented with big satin buttons, patent leather shoes with silver buckles, a big black hat with blue ribbons of satin tied on one side under the chin and long white kid-gloves. Helen stripped me there and then of everything except my hat, my three gloves, my black silk stockings and garters, and my high-heeled shoes. Then she strapped my hands behind me.

"Come Denise," she said taking me by the arm and opening the door, and pushing me into the passage. I was dreadfully ashamed. I tried to hide myself against her. I begged her pardon.

"Too late," she said.

She took me down into the little drawing-room and made me stand in the corner there until it was time to dress for dinner.

"There is a dinner party to-night dear," she said quizzing me. "You shall appear as Evelyn Beryl and I hope you will like it."

Phoebe dressed me in a girl's chemise and drawers with heavy lace frills, laced me into a corset tighter than I usually wore by an inch, gloved me to the shoulders in white kid, put on to me a very dcollet corsage of white satin and lace, a little tight pair of black velvet knickers which only reached to the middle of my thighs and were fastened there with diamond buckles and big jewelled buttons, leaving the frills of my drawers exposed. Girls' transparent black stockings strained tightly up to the corsets and adorned with big ruffled bow-garters of blue satin just above the knees, which the frills of my drawers constantly exposed, and girls' patent leather shining slippers with diamond buckles and scarlet Louis Quinze heels five and a half inches high, set off my legs and feet. A short sleeved black velvet coat cut tightly into my corseted waist and made in the style of Fragonard's pictures, lined with white satin and smart with jewelled buttons was slipped on over my bodice. It was open in front and showed my dcolletage, the swelling bosom, the girl's throat. My hair was taken down and arranged in long shining curls and tied back from my face with a white satin ribbon tied in an enormous bow. A white satin sash with a great bow and a diamond buckle on my left hip, a girl's big hat of blue satin, earrings, necklaces, and bracelets completed this costume. What made it still more humiliating was a horrible arrangement in front of the tight knickers. A big bow of black satin was passed through a great oval ruby buckle which blazed like fire against the softly gleaming black velvet.

In this humiliating dress Phoebe and Netta dragged me with jeers along the passages of my own house to Helen's bedroom.

I was in tears. Helen chained my hands behind me and fixed little black fetters of polished steel on my ankles. She was deliciously dressed in pink satin.

"Turn round Miss High-heels," she said sternly.

"That is your name for the future - Miss Evelyn High-heels the only name you will be known by. Turn round and let me see that the seams of your delicate stockings are straight." She showed me to myself in the mirrors. I looked just like a pretty grown-up girl dressed for some fantastic, masquerade. "Oh Helen," I moaned "you can't show me off dressed like this. You promised that I shouldn't be dressed as a girl."

"You certainly aren't dressed as a young lady, Evelyn," she said with a laugh. "Young ladies don't show the frills of their pantalons as a rule, nor so much pretty stocking. Nor do they wear flaunting scarlet heels as high as yours. Only improper women and young effeminate gentlemen undergoing discipline wear five and a half inch heels on their dainty shoes."

"But the ruby buckle in front - Oh that's horrible."

"You will wear that dear as the symbol of your subjection to my sex, the sign that over your sex, the sex of woman is imposed."

Handcuffed and fettered in this dress I was carried downstairs in Phoebe's arms into the drawing-room, and presented to my neighbours assembled for dinner. I could have died of shame. Congratulations were showered upon Helen.

"What an improvement!" cried Mrs. Dawson, the vicar's wife. "He is very like Denise."

"Yes I wish Denise could have stayed," said Helen," for us to compare them. She has gone home to her aunt this afternoon, where I am afraid she is not very happy."

The ladies crowded round me, the men guffawed contemptuously.

"I think the fetters and handcuffs complete the dress so prettily," said Lady Hartley.

The old dtraqu General stooped and felt my feet.

"The shoes are very smart," he said. "High-heeled girls' shoes are such a good thing for wilful and disobedient young gentlemen."

"He has certainly never looked so pretty," said Guy Repton with a snigger." I am sure he ought to be very grateful to his young step-sister for the dainty care with which she has dressed and molded his figure."

Thus they talked of me. I stood red with shame. During dinner I was made to stand up in the center of the table before them all with my heels together, and was only allowed to eat when they were having dessert. After dinner I shuffled in my fetters with the ladies into the drawing-room. Helen placed me in a chair with my feet on a satin footstool gave me some embroidery to work at with my gloved fingers and told me to be silent and work hard.

At ten o'clock she took the work away. "You mustn't spoil your pretty eyes dear," she said. "And you mustn't read a novel for you would soil those dainty white kid-gloves with the cover, and you mustn't dance for your scarlet heels are too high. You had better come with me. Violet will you come too?"

Helen slid back the panel of the punishment room, and made me lie face downwards on a white satin ottoman. She placed a white satin cushion under my bosom to lift it up.

"Hold up your head Evelyn High-heels. That's right." She took a little patent leather strap and bound my white gloved hands tightly behind me. Then she turned carefully up the lace frills and strapped my legs together above the knees. With a third biting little patent leather strap she fixed my ankles together. Finally with a fourth strap she tied my feet back to my legs in the most painful fashion.

"Violet will you see that Miss High-heels keeps her pretty face up and does not move."

Violet took a book and sat down in a comfortable chair beside the ottoman.

I was so strained in my miserable position that I could not keep still, and holding my head back and face high in the air wreaked my neck.Yet if I stirred Violet pinched my calves mercilessly, and if I lowered my face to rest my neck, she boxed my ears until my head sang.

"I thought you loved me Violet," I said.

"I loved a very pretty girl-friend called Denise," she replied coldly. "How do you like being a man Miss High-heels? Keep your bright little slippers still! After all it is not entire joy being a man is it? You had better have remained a girl. You look lovely in your velvet knickers but that is because you have a girl's figure and face, hands and feet."

Helen and Miss Priscilla came in an hour, sent Violet to bed and took down my knickers.

"We are going to start you off on your new career as a high-heeled young gentleman with a good birching," said Helen.

They laid me on my face on an ottoman, made the wheel run along the ceiling until the rope in the groove hung above my feet. They substituted for the leather strap a silk strap which bound my ankles tightly together. This they fastened to the hook at the end of the rope and by touching a lever in the wall, the rope was wound up until I hung head downwards in the air. Helen birched me in this attitude until I thought my head would burst. They lowered me, removed my knickers and laid me again on my face on the ottoman. They doubled back my legs and tied my right foot up to my right gloved elbow, my left foot to the left elbow, my hands of course, being still strapped behind me. Then they dragged my thighs apart and secured them in this position. Helen took a new birch. In her exquisite rustling frock of pink satin, her little satin slippers peeping restlessly out beneath the skirt, her face flushed and radiant with enjoyment, she looked wonderfully pretty. She stood beside me with her back to my head. Daintily holding my left strapped-back foot in her left hand, she flogged me between the thighs.

I screamed for mercy.

"You had better be thoroughly birched to-night darling," she said. "The recollection will save my pretty Miss High-heels many a birching in the future."

The twigs slashed and slashed me between my thighs curling up on to the stomach underneath and torturing with anguish the most tender parts of my body.

Then she set me free.

"Put on your knickers, Evelyn, again."

Writhing with pain, I took off my slippers. I could not have got the tight knickers over my high-heels, drew on my pantalon and knickers and Miss Priscilla fixed them up and buttoned and buckled them at my thighs. Then she removed my coat corsage, stays and chemise, stripping me naked from the waist upwards. There were some panels of looking-glass in the walls. How strange I looked in them, the buckled slippers the silk stockings, the frills, the pretty black velvet knickers with the jewelled buttons and rising out of them the white bosom and shoulders of a girl!

They laid me on the ottoman at the end of which a pair of stocks was fixed. They put me on my face, fixed my ankles in the stocks and my hands down to the legs of the ottoman.

"It is your turn now Aunt," said Helen to Miss Priscilla.

I was sobbing as if my heart would break.

My thighs were on fire.

"Oh please no more."

Helen took a seat in front of me and patted my tear-stained face with playful fingers.

"We are going to dress you in a scarlet corsage dear, which will go extremely prettily with your smart black velvet knickers. It will be a skin-tight dcollet corsage and Aunt Priscilla's birch will do all the dressmaking. I am not sure that it ought not to be a high-necked corsage. We will see. Go on Auntie."

Miss Priscilla took a new birch, long and supple and horrible. She swished it up and down and then she began cutting my back from left to right and afterwards from right to left avoiding carefully the skin of my shoulders which an evening bodice would leave exposed.

I struggled and yelled and sobbed.

"Oh it's dreadful! It's intolerable! Oh take all my fortune! Turn me out as a beggar! Only don't torture me. Ohooooooooooooh! Aaaaah!aaaaaaah!"

Helen laughed and lifted up her lovely little pink satin slipper to my mouth.

"Kiss my foot dear!"

I obeyed. The feel of her warm dainty instep under my lips almost made me forget the pain.

"There that will do," said Miss Priscilla. She released my hands and bound them behind me. I had no power of resistance. I was twitching, and writhing and torn with sobs. But they had no pity for me. They turned me over on my back and then Miss Priscilla birched my stomach. The agony of that punishment was the worst of all. When she released me I was trembling from head to foot, my teeth were chattering, I was going to swoon.

"No nonsense Miss High-heels," said Helen sternly.

"Stand up prettily in your bright buckled slippers and pretty velvet knickers."

She gave me some champagne and brandy. Then she took a little riding whip.

"Oh, no more!"

"We shall teach you obedience darling." Slash. "There is a good one and here's another." Slash, slash. "Oh we'll cook you finely. All your wealth." Slash. "All your jewels." Slash, slash. "All your pretty clothes, and high-heeled shoes won't save you." Slash, slash.

She kept turning me round, searching out white unbeaten spots on my body, and when she found one she slashed it until it matched the rest of me.

"There you are dear in your scarlet corsage," she said kissing me contemptuously. Phoebe was rung for and she carried me upstairs sobbing bitterly half-naked as I was and put me to bed.

I remained in bed ten days thinking - thinking hard. On the eleventh day I was able to bear corsets once more round my body. I was allowed to get up. It was the evening and after dinner. I was dressed in the most wonderful costume of palest lavender satin - dcollet corsage, a sash with long gold fringed streamers, down to the heels of my shoes and a great bow at my back, short satin knickers with a ruby buckle in front, and diamond buckles at the thighs, the frills of my drawers - which also were short and did not hide my knees, fluttering, open-worked silk stockings and satin slippers which were covered with diamonds and had diamond bows besides and five and a half inch heels; and of course long white kid-gloves.

I was led to Helen. She kissed me affectionately. I was encouraged to say:

"Helen please don't keep me dressed like this!"

"But I love you like this," she said leading me to a long mirror. "Stand with your satin slippers together. You look exquisite dear with your curls swinging down to your waist and your tall slender figure tightly encased in lavender satin."

"But I can't go out dressed like this."

"This is an evening dress, darling. You can go out in your velvet knickers and your little buttoned patent leather boots."

"But everybody will jeer at me."

"I think that you will find that they will make love to you, dear," Helen answered with a smile.

"But when am I to be allowed to wear trousers again."

"Never," said Helen decidedly. She sat down. I stared at her aghast.

"Never?"

"Of course not. How can you wear trousers with those hips and that waist and that pretty posterior?"

"But it's my corset which intensifies the girlish look of them," I said blushing deeply.

"No doubt, but you can never get rid of your corset darling. Remember that you have girl's round breasts. You must have a support for them, otherwise your figure would soon be ruined. It would be ridiculous to let you wear trousers. You look pretty now. You would only look silly and, dear, rather improper in trousers."

I got red with confusion.

"Yes," Helen went on, "I am responsible for your good name. That can never be."

I saw that it was in vain to bend her. I recognized also some truth in her observations. She and Miss Priscilla between them had had their revenge. I had inherited my father's fortune and in return they had made me irrevocably a girl.

I fell on my knees before her, as she had prophesied that I would.

"Then Helen I have been thinking. Let Evelyn Beryl disappear altogether."

I saw a flash of triumph in her eyes.

"Let him die! You will become mistress of the estate. Let Denise return to you. I am never to marry. I am never to wear trousers. I am never to have control. Let me have the liberty, the life of a girl."

Helen kissed me ardently. To this she had been bringing me.

"I will make you very happy Denise," she said. "I will keep you beautifully dressed. You shall have Violet, your friends, your enjoyments."

So it was arranged. With Guy Repton's help and her lawyer's and my enormous fortune all was easily arranged. I was sent down dressed as a girl under Miss Priscilla's charge to a little lonely house by the sea. Helen announced that I had gone to a German University to complete my education. A student dying of consumption with a very poor family was bribed (as were his parents) to assume my name. He died and was cremated as Dennis Evelyn Beryl. You may see his tombstone in a little churchyard at Bonn.

Helen went to Germany for the funeral. No one raised any difficulties or suspected any fraud. Her lawyer was well-paid. All over my estate the tenants were delighted that she was now the real owner and mistress. On her return she announced that she was going to make a home for Denise Beryl out of memory for poor Evelyn. Denise had made herself popular. Denise was welcomed. I came back as a girl. Violet was delighted. What of me? Let one final scene be the answer.

It is two years later.

A magnificent ball at a great house in the height of the London season. A conservatory screened with palms and lit with a dim light. Through the door comes the languorous music of a waltz. Inside the conservatory two armchairs are close together. In one a girl dressed in a lovely rich frock of white velvet, pink roses in her corsage and in her hair, jewels on her white neck and her gloved wrists. Her red lips are smiling, her bright eyes sparkling, her fair face radiant with pleasure. At her side bending towards her a young handsome man with a look of force upon his face, the young man who had made the brilliant speech in Hampshire and is now a cabinet minister. The young man speaks.

"Denise, I must call you Denise. You are adorable from your curls to the tips of your little buckled satin slippers."

Denise laughs, blushes and coquettishly places together in view the little white shining high-heeled shoes.

"My heart is beneath them," says the young man. "How shall I prove it?" Denise turns her sparkling eyes to her companion.

"Kiss them on your knees," she says. They are alone they think: the young man drops on his knees and reverently kisses the small feet. Denise springs up with a laugh. "I must go. I have a partner for this dance."

"You will give me your hand?" the young man implores.

"You ask too much," says Denise with a smile, "I have already given you my feet."

She runs lightly to the ball-room. She has lost her position, her fortune, her authority as a man but she has gained, as a girl, power which few men ever have.

Yet she in her turn is subject to others. A young woman, dark-haired and pretty, clothed in a gown of gold brocade, gold slippers and stockings rises from behind another palm and walks quietly to the ball-room. She taps Denise with her fan upon her pretty white shoulders.

"I was in the conservatory," she says.

Denise looks alarmed.

"Helen," she falters imploringly.

"I heard you Denise. I cannot allow such vanity and ill-manners. Say good-night to your hostess."

Denise crosses the ball-room and says good-night. She has been looking forward to another hour of dancing. She comes back to Helen with an anxious face.

"Pick up the train of your dress, Denise and follow me." Helen is familiar with the house. The hostess is her friend. She walks placidly along the corridors. Denise follows timidly holding up her velvet dress. The diamond buckles on her little smart satin slippers sparkle and tremble as her shaking feet follow in Helen's steps. Helen comes to a deserted dimly-lit passage, opens the door and turns on the electric light. They are in a library. Helen locks the door. She has a gold bag at her wrist. She takes from it a white silk stay lace.

"Your hands."

Whimpering, but not protesting, the pretty girl turns her white back to Helen and obediently joins her hands. In a moment they are bound together by the stay-lace which cuts into the delicate kid-gloves.

"Open your mouth!"

A lace handkerchief is forced into it. The next moment, Denise in her ball-gown is lying face downwards over Helen's lap, the skirt is tossed back, the frilled drawers of batiste hardly veiling the white bottom are revealed, and Helen's white gloved hand falls twelve times with resounding smacks on the exposed bottom which quivers at every stroke. Helen places Denise upon her feet, unbinds her ankles, rearranges her dress. Denise is weeping. Helen removes the gag from the girl's lips and marches her to a corner of the room.

"The carriage is not ordered for an hour. You will stand here until I fetch you. No one will come and I shall lock the door and take the key," says Helen.

She stoops, she produces a piece of chalk from her gold bag. One after the other she picks up the pretty feet of her prisoner and chalks the soles of the glistening satin slippers. She places the feet carefully, with the high heels together.

"I shall know Denise, if you move."

She turns off the light, locks the door and takes the key. She walks placidly back to the ball-room. Denise with her hands tied behind her stands in the corner and weeps silently, not daring to move her buckled satin dancing-slippers.

In a hour Helen comes back cloaked for departure, with another white satin cloak over her arm. She replaces the key and entering the room, switches on the light again. She lifts the gleaming frock of white velvet to see if her prisoner's dainty shoes have moved. They have not dared. She wipes the soles clean and then fastens the cloak round Denise.

"We will keep your hands tied Denise," and Denise, ashamed and afraid lest any of the other girls, or any of the men should detect her punishment, follows Helen closely to the front door. A carpet leads to the carriage. Helen helps Denise in to the luxurious automobile. She steps in afterwards, takes her seat besides Denise, and slips from the girl's shoulders and her own their satin cloaks. The door is closed. An electric lamp illumines the automobile. As it drives off, Helen stoops with a thin cord of white silk in her hands.

At once follow prayers and entreaties from Denise, a delicious commotion of her billowy velvet skirt, an entrancing rustling of her lace petticoat, a pretty sparkling of agitated slipper-buckles in the depths of the carriage on the white little satin-shod feet.

"No, no, I won't have it," says Denise obstinately. Helen says not a word, but in the depths of the carriage a pair of small resolute hands tightly gloved are engaged in subduing a pair of dainty mutinous ankles, tightly encased in filmy white silk stockings.

The delicately-gloved hands gradually win the victory.

The high-heeled glistening slippers are crossed at last, the nervous fingers quickly loop the silk cord twice round the fluttering ankles and draw it tight and still tighter. There is still a feeble little twitching of pretty toes, but in a few moments even that ceases. The small feet in their fairy-like slippers submit reluctantly to the degradation of the cord. It is knotted tight about the ankles. Helen rises again lifting up in her arms the velvet-sheathed legs now rigid and helpless of her prisoner and extends the dainty satin-slippered feet upon the opposite seat. She bends over Denise.

"You resisted me dear. Three days in the dark prison on bread and water," she murmurs.

She takes the trembling girl in her arms. After a minute or so with a sweet rustling of dainty lace dessous Denise turns her slim velvet-clothed body on its side and buries her flushed face in her mistress' white bosom.

"Oh Helen," she murmurs.

The gloved bound hands are twitching spasmodically behind her back, the tightly-corded satin-slippered feet are strained and arched in some delicious tension, soft drawn out sighs of languor burst from her perfumed lips.

"Three days on bread and water in a dark prison, Denise," says Helen.

"Three years, darling, if you wish," sighs Denise, and ardent kisses bruise a pair of tender mouths.