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I found an opening in front like Mademoiselle's; I pushed what I possessed into it. It was hairy like Mademoiselle's, but the hairs were so fair, so like the colour of the skin, that I could scarcely have detected them even if they had not been covered as they must have been.

I was extremely excited. Beatrice's reproaches rushed upon my mind. The unusual circumstances of being master also stimulated me. Notwithstanding protestations and observations, I pinned her down. I was really the stronger.

"Now I shall fuck you!" I cried.

She was silent, evidently meditating vengeance.

I did fuck her very violently.

"Lord Alfred," I then said, "you are a woman."

I tore open her nightshirt and played with her breasts-of course they were a woman's.

I saw it all now.

"What business have you to wear trousers?" I asked.

"How dare you wear petticoats?" she retorted with a bitter smile.

This dumbfounded me.

Lady Alfred jumped up at the first chance. She was Wild. "I shall call Mademoiselle," she said, and not heeding me, "he" hastily threw on a dressing gown and left the room.

Presently the door opened, and she re-entered; and immediately behind her came the stately form of my governess, carrying in her hand, to my great dismay, a long, lithe birch.

"So," said Mademoiselle, "you have turned a man into a woman, Julia, and insulted your lover."

"And he," I cried, defiantly, "has proved to me that I am a man after all."

I trembled and had grown very pale.

"I will argue with this," answered Mademoiselle, shaking her weapon.

Lady Alfred drew me, now incapable of resistance, from the bed, and put me on the couch. Then she dragged me across the end of it and held me down. Between them they got my nightdress up to my shoulders, and Mademoiselle then birched me until I was beside myself.

"There," she exclaimed at last, "now, Lord Alfred, I shall leave her to you. She has had a lesson she will remember."

I was too much overcome to object to the misuse of the pronoun.

I spent that night with Lady Alfred Ridlington, and she made me work very hard. She played the part of a husband, and I was made to lie on my back while she worked her wicked will.

Exhausted, towards daybreak we both fell asleep, and I dreamt that Lady Alfred Ridlington had metamorphosed me into a girl and had made my male attributes her own. I awoke to find her leg across me.

A long time seemed to pass before the matutinal refreshment came, as it did come at last, in the shape of chocolate.

"You are to be a girl and I a man still," she said, "because you must wear petticoats. I shall tame you. I know how you behaved to your governess just as she knows how you behaved to the nursery maid. You shall not pry underneath women's garments for nothing. You shall not make the indecent advances and the insulting propositions you made to your governess without punishment and therefore you will please understand you are a girl. Now turn over!"

The order was accompanied by the exercise of some physical persuasion, which, weakened as I was I did not know how to counteract or resist. The persuasion was indeed force; and from white feminine arms I could not withstand it.

It was terrible, though, to be outraged thus by a woman.

"You shall be made to be a girl to punish your naughtiness. I quite agree with Mademoiselle. It is the most effective punishment."

And so, before I got down to the breakfast room, I had to endure again, what I considered the last degree of degradation, three or four times.

My discovery certainly alleviated its severity, and the strangeness of the sensations gave me a certain animal gratification; but I knew that Lady Alfred Ridlington had no right to know me anywhere but in front.

CHAPTER 5

He Was His Own Wife

If she would only wear petticoats, I thought, if she would be my mistress instead of my master, how much more I should enjoy it, or rather how much less difficult the yoke of iron would be to bear. My peculiar and constitutional susceptibility made it easy, perhaps pleasant, to me to endure all things from a woman.

This charm, this romance was dissipated to the winds, because Lady Alfred Ridlington would wear trousers, while I, the male, was made to wear women's clothing.

I was so fond of women that I did not always object to being in their garments, but I hated the domination of the masculine emblems, although covering a divine female form by whom the sway was exercised. Had Lady Alfred taken my trousers away and worn them herself while she compelled me to wear her drawers, the matter would have been different. And it would have been so, too, if she had really been Lord Alfred.

All the glamour of my being actually a girl had vanished at a blow. I almost wept as I thought I could no longer dream I was one-and one with a lover. Lord Alfred Ridlington no longer interested me for he was a fraud. He was his own wife. What a rude shattering shock to all my delicious dreams in the conservatory, to my anxiety to get a baby between us.

I felt overwhelmed with chagrin and despite, when I dwelt upon all the feminine airs and graces into enduing myself with which I had been cajoled by this imposture. And yet, after all, my tyrant was a woman. What a complexion, what a skin, what limbs she possessed! What knowledge of physical sensations, what physical ecstasy she could cause! How entrancing she would look in petticoats.

I wondered she had the hardihood, now that I knew the secret, to appear that morning without them. Mademoiselle knew it. Perhaps 332

Lady Alfred was not aware that Beatrice was in it too. Without nicely weighing the consequences it struck me how gloriously I could revenge myself by letting the secret out at breakfast before the girls if an opportunity should occur. She would be overwhelmed with shame and confusion. Unless she was a brazen harridan, she must have sufficient womanliness and modesty left to be abashed and horrified when she was discovered to be a lady so wanting in proper feeling as to dress herself in men's clothes.

I did not in my indignation consider, as it would have been much better for me if I had, that I was in her power and in Mademoiselle's, and that they could turn the tables on me cruelly, and that they certainly would, if I so exposed my tormentor.

The three girls looked fresh and brisk in the bright morning light in their dainty maidenly frocks. They did not compliment me upon my appearance, Agnes remarking that I looked "quite haggard, and had black circles about my eyes," and proceeding in her kittenish way to tease me.

Beatrice remarked that "most brides looked so after the first night," an observation which made my hands itch to smack her face. Maud gave me an intelligent glance in which there was some desire and some sympathy. She whisked her skirts about her lower half, and so managed them as to make the form of her exquisite limbs very apparent beneath them, but faithful to the haughty indifference that characterized her, she said nothing.

Mademoiselle was more languishing than usual and her air conveyed that she possessed some secret source of amusement.

Lady Alfred Ridlington entered the room last and astonished me with her perfect self-possession. I regarded her with contempt as a fraud just as I suppose Beatrice regarded me.

I now carefully observed Lady Ridlington's round thighs, breasts, and form, and wondered however I or anyone else could ever have been duped into the belief that she was what her clothes denoted. But suggestion of a fact often goes so far as to make one discredit the evidence of one's own senses in respect of it.

She spoke quite gaily, quite en preux cavalier, to Mademoiselle, who responded in a similar tone of gallantry.

I was much entertained at Lady Alfred's perfect acting, and debonnaire, careless manner. Even before my eyes, which she soon perceived fixed upon her, she did not quail in the least, but in her own glance there was a latent threat and a cold stare as much as to say, "I have not done with you yet."