Miss High-Heels free porn video

Preface: One of the all-time great, classic TV-stories is Miss High- Heels. It was first published - as far as I can trace it - by the famous Select Biblioth?que in Sceaux (France) about 1929 as the translation of a work by a British author whose name was given as "Sir O. T**". Actually it was not really a translation, but a very freely adapted French version of the original English text. Later two more works by the same author (but now his initials were given as C. F.) were published titled "Miss Buckles" and "The Feminised Page" again in French versions. If anybody has these works in the original English version I would love to hear from them. Enjoy! Rhonda Wagram =========================== 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 down 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 moulded 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 minute's 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 corseti?re. 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 moulded 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 d?butante 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 d?collet? 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 d?collet? 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 parlour-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 manouevre, 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 with 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 a