Then Dorothea came in again without knocking, Mabel walked back to the far wall, and her fists were closed in balls and her lips were a couple of white lines, so angry she was.
"Bravo!" the governess said with a smile. ''You look pretty like this Why don't you speak? I'll soon make you answer me when I talk to you, you'll see."
With calm, she sat down on an armchair, drawing up her skirt above her knees and revealing perfectly shaped legs.
"My dear child," she said, "you must take the habit of considering yourself as a mere little child in front of me. I command and you obey. That is your role… You aren't very talkative, are you? From now on, you will have to tell me how your are dressed, in detail, every morning. Let's see. What are you wearing under your skirt? A slip? A bra? A pair of silk panties? And how about your stockings, how are they fixed? Answer, Mabel, I'm listening!"
A long silence succeeded her words, Miss Sunway contented herself with shrugging her shoulders with contempt.
"You still persist in not answering, do you?" the educator went on, "So, I shell have to give you a more direct order: lift up your skirt with your hands to show me what you are wearing underneath!"
Of course, Mabel did not move. So Dorothea stood up and walked up to her. Her steely eyes were glistening with anger under her spectacles and her pretty face was white and taut.
"This is to teach you to be more obedient!" she said, and she delivered a really smacking slap on the cheek of the girl who reeled under the shock and remained a few seconds speechless and too astounded to react.
When Mabel had recovered the momentary shock her eyes sparkled and all her pride surged up in her.
"You brute! Wicked woman! You'll pay for that!" she said.
Miss von Berner shrugged her shoulders and said, between thin lips:
"The only person who will pay is you, little fool, or rather it will be your behind! But I am prepared to be forgiving. I'm going to leave this room for five minutes. When I return I want to see you with your skirt up to your waist, do you hear? And if you don't do as I say, I won't answer for the consequences!"
Without leaving any time for Mabel to answer she got out of the room, locking the door behind her.
Locked up and powerless, the young English girl could no longer master her rage. She threw herself on the bed, kicking and pounding the-pillow with her fists and sobbing uncontrollably.
When the door opened a few moments later and the governess appeared, Mabel got up, pale but defiant.
"Well, what about that skirt?" Dorothea asked calmly.
"I'll never lift this skirt, do you hear?" the girl cried out, "You're a wicked creature, an abominable rascal, and I'll drag you before the courts! For the last time, I demand that you let me leave at once!"
The governess smiled sardonically.
"Very well, Miss Mabel Sunway, since you won't obey of your own free will, I'll make you obey by means of the whip!"
"The whip?"
"That's right — the whip on your bare behind! I'm going to whip you like a baby, for all your eighteen years!"
She went towards the door and called out:
"Bridget! Bring the silk cords and the dog whip!"
On hearing those words, Mabel became very pale. She no longer doubted now the awful reality, as she saw the servant enter, and she guessed that she had been standing for quite a while behind the door.
"Now, Bridget," the governess went on, "you're going to help me master this girl. We're going to tie her up and make her submit to the punishment!"
The two women threw themselves on the unfortunate girl who did her best to fight, but Bridget was big and robust; as for Dorothea von Berner she was uncommonly strong, so both of them had little difficulty in reducing the English girl to impotence and they dragged her to the feet of a chair in spite of her cries of rage and her insults which she showered at her skirted executioners.
Mabel was laid on her stomach across the chair, her breasts on the seating part. They tied her hands to the legs on one side and her thighs to the legs on the other side of the chair. Her knees were on the floor but the upper part of her body was entirely tied to the chair, allowing no possibility of movements.
"Cowards! Brutes! Dirty cowards!" Mabel howled, "let me go at once! I forbid you to treat me in this way!"
Dorothea, calm and ironical got near the girl, so near that her perfumed skirt caressed her face.
"This is where disobedience has led you, Mabel!" she said. "Do you understand now that you are at my mercy and that I can do exactly what I please with you?"
And while she was speaking, she tugged violently at Mabel's ears and even tried to fondle her face as if to a dog, but the English girl, at the apex of rage, tried to bite her hand, so Dorothea went to the other side of the seat.
"You see," she said, "what you were reduced to show me of your own free will, you'll have to let me see it now. Now, do you feel the hands that are lifting up your skirt, do you feel them?"
At the same time she seized Mabel's dress and drew it back up to her waist, revealing the fat and magnificent behind of the girl, offering itself insolently, as it were, from its vantage position. It was clothed in a pair of pink silk panties decorated by fine lace.
"Gosh!" Dorothea mocked, "what pretty panties! Not tight enough to my liking, but we shall remedy that later. For the moment, I want to see your bare behind, your big buttocks which are going to be whipped so thoroughly!"
So saying, she undid the two buttons which tied the knickers round the girl's waist Then she drew them down to her feet and threw them away in a corner of the room.
As Mabel had not put on any stockings, she had no neither garments left and she was now offering to the mocking looks of her executioners her nudity. Her fat and white buttocks, with a skin smooth and flawless, were convulsively drawn together. Mabel whined with the shame of feeling the air caress the most intimate part of her anatomy.
"A fine behind indeed, fit to be whipped!" the governess said. "I'll show you that, for a girl like you, discipline is to be administered almost exclusively on that side of your person."
"You wont dare," cried Mabel, "you won't dare touch me!"
"I won't dare? You'll see if I won't!"
The governess grasped a heavy dog-whip, with its lash of plaited leather. She placed herself conveniently at some distance from her victim, then, with all her strength, she gave one lash on Mabel's buttocks.
A long red weal could now be seen plainly on the wounded flesh.
Mabel had let out a shriek of pain and anger mixed with shame. She tried her best to move and nearly upset the chair on which she was tied.
"Bridget," the governess ordered, "go and sit down on Mabel's back — to prevent her from moving! But sit near her neck, so that there should be no risk of my hitting you with the whip."
Bridget obeyed with joy. Her vulgar soul cruelly enjoyed humiliating that proud aristocrat who had been her mistress only yesterday. She sat down heavily, weighing down on Mabel's delicate breasts which crushed against the scat. Bridget was big and tall and weighed about thirteen stone. Under the weight of her enormous rump the young girl was half suffocating.
Then, with calm, Dorothea resumed the punishment. She lashed with all her strength and with a refined art that was the result of a long practice. Lifting her arm high up, she brought it down furiously and the end of the whip bit the flesh with a smacking sound. With her free hand the governess held tip her own skirt up to her knees, to allow for a freer movement. With her pinched lips and her eyes sparkling with an evil glee, she seemed to derive a real physical enjoyment from the torture she was inflicting.