She left the room, leaving Mabel with the chambermaid. On her knees, she had to present the linen she had washed.
"And what about this?" the servant exclaimed suddenly, pointing at one of her pairs of drawers, "you find this clean, do you? Don't you see that there are some stains left, you fool? Answer!"
"I apologize to Your Ladyship," Mabel murmured, trembling, "I thought.''
Bridget's eyes sparkled with anger and she interrupted her with a brutal slap.
"You thought, you thought — you mustn't think! You only have to obey! If I please to forget myself in my linen, you're here to wash it! You're a slave and nothing else, d'you hear?"
"Yes, Your Ladyship."
"Go ahead and do it again before me, and let it be clean! And, first of all, come near me so that I punish you for your lack of care!"
With fear tugging at her heart, Mabel did as she was told. She received four powerful slaps on the face which made her reel and two strokes of the horsewhip across the breasts, which drew screams of pain out of her. Again she had a spark of rebellion thinking that her ands were free and she was bigger and stronger and she also had a whip. Mabel understood that she would be the under dog.
So she returned to her trough and, under the despising eyes of the chambermaid, she started again washing the panties in question.
"It's all right now," Bridget said after a while. "Wipe your hands and follow me to your governess's room!"
While she was walking upstairs the English girl felt a violent tug at her bowels. She could not help mentioning it to Bridget and asked her timidly to accompany her to the toilets.
When you go to bed, not before!" was the maid's harsh answer.
Mabel wondered with anguish how she could ever reach that moment. Bridget knocked at the governess's door.
"Let Mabel in," Dorothea said. "As for you, Bridget, you may go down and lay the table."
We can guess with what apprehension Mabel entered her mistress's room. What struck her first was the strange costume Miss von Berner was wearing. The governess had given a last-minutes touch to her make up and she looked more ravishing than ever. She was dressed in the Spanish way: an ancient shawl of great beauty was draped round her like a blouse, moulding her proud bosom. As for her flowered skirt, such as the Sevillian dancers wear, it was as wide as an eighteenth-century dress and gave her a very particular exotic charm. On her ankles she wore gold bracelets, visible under the very thin silk stockings, and on her feet were small high-heeled red leather shoes.
Subjugated by such imperious beauty, Mabel knelt down and kissed respectfully the young woman's feat. The latter pushed her back with a slight kick in her face and sat down in an armchair, playing with a thin horsewhip.
"To-day, Mabel," she said in a severe tone, "will begin your first lesson of humiliation. Be attentive and obedient if your don't want your big behind to strike acquaintance with this riding-crop!"
She paused dramatically and went on:
"I have already told you what I thought of you: you're rude, putrid with pride, modern and dissipated, in a word full of defects. It was time I arrived in your life to bring you back on the straight path. I repeat it, my intention is to make you become a submissive and pliable thing, without a shadow of personality, in a word, a slave. Already you must be aware of how little you are before me: here you are, on your knees, trembling in the fear of the whip. Your flesh is no longer free since you're strapped in a corset after my own wish. Your body linen is quite unlike that of girls of your age since, under my orders, you're wearing ridiculously small panties maintained between your thighs by a leather strap and attached to the waist by forty buttons in order to imprison your behind better.
Your hands, now free, are mostly tied behind your back, just because I like it this way. In a word, you're really a slave, 'my slave'. Now, a slave's lot is to obey. So you will learn to obey me and carry out my fanciest orders without resistance or murmur. But, first of all, I shall inspect your linen to see if you have learned to check your bodily needs. Stand up, lift up your skirt and cami-knickers and walk up to me!"
Poor Mabel was beginning to be used to such a gesture, so that it was almost mechanically that she lifted her skirts and walked up to the governess. The latter unbuckled the leather strap and inspected carefully the girl's panties. Then, just as Bridget had done some time before, she put her hand to it and started pawing, caressing, pinching the juvenile flesh through the silk panties.
"Tell me in a loud intelligible voice what I'm doing!" she ordered.
"You've got your hand between my thighs, Mistress, and you're feeling my panties to see if they are dry."
"And now?"
"Now you're slipping your hand behind… you're caressing my right buttock slowly… now you're caressing the left one… you're putting your finger in the middle… you're driving the material into it., now you're bringing your hand back between my thighs, you're tickling me,, you're pinching me… Mercy, Mistress, you're hurting me!"
Dorothea went on pinching with sadistic joy and Mabel had to submit, with tears in her eyes.
"That's enough," the governess said at last. "Lower down your skirts, I shall now submit you to a few exercises of obedience. I shall give you rapid orders and you must obey with the rapidity. And mind the whip!"
Then Miss von Berner started ordering her slave a whole series of movements which the unfortunate girl tried her best to carry out at once. She made her get on her knees, then flat down on her stomach, then stand up, back on her knees, stand up, down again on her stomach, and so on. As soon as Mabel was a little slow she received a stroke of the whip. This perverse game lasted a quarter of an hour. The merciless governess seemed to enjoy the game of cat and mouse. More than a hundred timed Mabel had to kneel down, stand up, crawl down, lie on her stomach kiss her mistress's feet. Dishevelled, bathed in sweat, she seemed exhausted when at last the mistress put an end to these cruet exercises.
"And now," Dorothea said, "you will learn to worship me. For you must understand that I don't want to dominate you only by the fear of the whip — I also want you to consider me as an exceptional creature, a sort of goddess whose shoes you are hardly worth kissing."
She spoke with great pride, conscious of all her powerful authority. And Mabel was looking at her with fright and awe.
"Von must learn to love and to respect everything urn-rounding me or belonging to me; not only the different parts of my body, but also my clothes, my linen, my ornaments and everything on me. In the worship of every object, your brain will follow a morbid evolution and eventually you will end up by considering as sacred everything connected wily my person; just like a bitch who recognizes the perfume of her mistress, so you will soon know me by my perfumes, from the odour of my dresses to the most intimate ones of my body. And, to begin with, you will start; by lying down on your stomach and licking slowly my shoes, humbly, abjectly, from the tips up to the heels, without forgetting the soles!"
She punctuated her order with a lash of the whip and Mabel had to do as she was told. It was a strange spectacle indeed to see this attractive girl whose waist was squeezed narrowly, licking the red shoes of a, superb mistress who, comfortably sitting and with a cigarette in her mouth, lashed her without pity from time to time to stimulate her.
The humiliating licking of the shoes lasted a quarter of an hour. When Mabel's tongue had become all dry, the governess had another whim. She stood up, majestically, and forced her slave to kneel down.
"Now," she ordered, "you will kiss the hem of my dress, very humbly. Then you will lift up my skirt and put your head underneath. Then you will understand why I've a wide dress on — it is to keep you a prisoner under me so that you can worship my linen like the good slave you are. First, you will kiss my legs with passion, from the ankles up to the thighs. You will deposit a long kiss on each of my garters., then you will lick my bare thighs. Then you will kiss the hem of my drawers and all its surface first in front then behind. And above all you must understand that it is a great honour I'm doing you in allowing you to kiss my bottom. You must be trembling with emotion, ecstasies and respect and you must understand that the whip will punish you if ever you are not passionate enough in your caresses. Now, you can begin!"