The governess stood up and came near her slave.
"And now, write what I'm going to dictate!" she ordered in a dry tone. "My dear Myriam, I received your letter with great pleasure. Of course I shall be very glad to have you her at Kelingson's. We're having quite a lot of fun here at the moment. Come as soon as you can and bring all your clothes and things with you, for I won't let you go so soon! Please wire the date of your arrival and a car will pick you up at the station. I'm looking forward to seeing you very much. With an affectionate kiss, Your Mabel.'"
While she was writing, Mabel's hands were trembling. She guessed that her mistress was planning something wicked and that Myriam Hekings would be the victim. She looked uneasily at her mistress and ventured to say:
"Divine Mistress, I beg you, not Myriam!"
Dorothea slapped her face with violence.
"So!" she cried, "a bitch of a slave like you, you allow yourself to give your opinion and interfere in your mistress's affairs! Mind you don't do that again, or else, beware of the whip!"
She addressed the maid:
"Bridget, take the slave back to her work!"
"And don't forget," Miss Crimpton recommended, "to gag her severely after having replaced my panties into her mouth!
When Mabel had left the room with her punishment in place, Dorothea spoke:
"I hope, my dear Eva," she said with a cruel smile, "that we shall soon have two slaves in Kelingson's castle."
Three days later, Miss Myriam Hekings arrived unsuspecting in the mistresses' lair. Mabel had not lied. Her friend was of great beauty. Two years older than Miss Sunway, she was slightly taller and more mature. Her face was made up with great care but without excess and had an green eyes and auburn-dyed hair. Her body was aristocratic charm, with a sensual mouth, large like that of a girl fond of sports but, to judge from the roundness covering her tailor-maid suit, quite curvaceous. Very elegant, she had in her gait something insolent and her head was held up proudly, showing that she knew about her beauty and her wealth.
Dorothea von Berner had arranged everything with careful planning for the girl's arrival. At the station, Myriam was astonished not to find her friend waiting for her. There was only a liveried chauffeur hired for the occasion by Dorothea and who was at the wheel of Miss Crimpton's car. He drove with another car behind, carrying all the suitcases and trunks belonging to the newcomer.
At the castle, she was received very courteously by Bridget, dressed up in a spruce maid outfit. She ushered Myriam into the luxuriously furnished parlour.
"Miss Mabel will be here in a moment," she announced.
Slightly taken aback by this odd greeting, Myriam waited for a long quarter of an hour, wondering why Mabel was not showing herself more eager to meet her. At last, the door opened and Miss Sunway came in.
"Mabel, darling!" said Myriam, "how happy I am to see you again!"
Impetuously she threw herself into Mabel's arms, then she drew back and said, astonished:
"What are you wearing under your dress? It's hard!"
Mabel blushed.
"It's… it's my corset!" she said with an effort.
Miss Hekings burst out laughing.
"What? You, who couldn't bear any constraint on your body, you're now wearing stays? you really have changed!"
While she was speaking, Myriam was examining her friend with surprise. Mabel had changed. She used to be so gay and merry, as well as coquettish, but now she seemed shy and blushing and as if paralysed by an unaccountable fright. Myriam was looking her up and down with growing astonishment.
Why was Mabel made up like a whore, with a beauty patch at the corner of one eye and another near the mouth. Why was she standing so erect, with her eyes fixed and her head thrown back, and her arms hanging alongside her body? Her friend was also astonished to notice that Mabel had now a waspish waist and an enormous bottom jutting out provocatively, and that her feet were shod in exaggeratedly high-heeled shoes. And what funny garments she was wearing: this white silk corset so tight, and her red silk skirt also very tight which moulded her buttocks with indiscreet precision.
But she did not dare ask Mabel for the reasons of her strange way of dressing and the changes in her attitude, so she just said gaily:
"It was very kind of you to invite me to the castle. I hope we're going to have lots of fun."
"I hope so too," the slave said in a strangled voice.
"What do you do here? Rides in cars, tennis, swimming?"
Mabel had a movement betraying her fear.
"Oh no," she answered, "I'm not allowed to."
This time Myriam did not hide her surprise.
"Well, what do you know! You've always been independent, I don't understand. Who doesn't allow you to have fun? My god, you're eighteen and a half years of age, you're no longer a baby, are you? Who is it, tell me?"
"My governesses," the girl answered in a low voice.
"Governesses at your age? Decidedly, Mabel, you astonish me! But, I say, darling, I'd better warn you that those honourable persons had better not try to impose their law upon met! And I hope that in my honour they will allow you a little more freedom than you seem to have, what?"
"Hush, darling, if they heard you!..
At that precise moment the door opened wide and Mabel drew back a few steps like a tamed lion: Dorothea von Berner was entering the room. She was beautiful as always, with her proud face carefully made up, her back lustre hair, her sculptural body strictly moulded in a blue velvet tailor made suit, her legs encased in silk and circled with golden bracelets. She was holding in her hand a thin horsewhip with which she tapped nervously the tip of her leather shoes.
With a nonchalant step she advanced to the middle of the room, without appearing to have noticed the presence of Myriam Hekings. And she fixed Mabel with a hard expression in her eyes.
"Well, aren't I saluted to-day?"
Dumbfounded, Myriam saw this incredible sight: Mabel, blushing with shame, had knelt down, while casting furtive glances in her direction; then she prostrated herself face down before the new-comer, licking like a dog the tip of her shoes. Insolently, the governess was eyeing the body grovelling before her.
"And my bottom!" she said dryly.
Blushing more and more, poor Mabel half rose, then, on her knees, she went behind Dorothea, lifted up her skirt a little, up to the bottom of the pink panties adorned with satin garters and she pot her head under the skirt, applying her lips against the buttocks of her mistress and remaining nearly a minute in that position.
Dumbstruck with stupor, Myriam had sat down on a sofa.
At that moment, Dorothea seemed to become aware of the girl's presence and smiled at her:
"You're probably astonished to see your friend Mabel so transformed? Of course, she had omitted to warn you about it. Let me tell you that Mabel Sunway is no longer the girl she used to be; she has entirely lost her qualities of heiress and aristocrat. Come, on, Mabel, tell us in your own words what you've become!"
She punctuated her order with a slight lash with the horsewhip and Mabel answered:
"I'm only a humble slave, Divine Mistress, an obedient bitch, happy to belong to you and subservient to your whip and whims."
"That's fine. Now stand up and put your hands behind your back when I'm talking to you. I haven't seen you yet to-day. Are you well corseted and strapped? And do you feel under my absolute rule? Is your body submitting with respect to the discipline of your clothes?"
"Yes, Divine Mistress, I'm wearing under my bottom is imprisoned, as you wish it to be, in a drew a tightly-laced corset and my slavish pair of white silk panties which do not make a single wrinkle or fold on my buttocks."
"And you haven't wetted them, I hope? You've kept your need in check."
"Oh, yes, Divine Mistress."