"How long is this going to last?" I asked. "How long are you going to keep me in girls' clothes, and rob me of my position?"
Helen looked at me calmly.
"Not a moment longer than you wish, dear," she said. "You shall come out of your girls' clothes now."
I was wearing a very pretty black velvet gown ornamented with big satin buttons, patent leather shoes with silver buckles, a big black hat with blue ribbons of satin tied on one side under the chin and long white kid gloves. Helen stripped me there and then of everything except my black silk stockings and garters, and my high-heeled shoes. Then she strapped my hands behind me.
"Come, Denise," she said, taking me by the arm. Opening the door, she pushed me into the passage. I was dreadfully ashamed. I tried to hide myself against her. I begged her pardon.
"Too late," she said grimly.
She took me down into the little drawing room and made me stand in the corner there until it was time to dress for dinner.
"There is a dinner party tonight dear," she said to me. "You shall appear as Dennis Beryl and I hope you will like it."
Phoebe dressed me in a girls' chemise and drawers with heavy lace frills, laced me into a corset tighter than I usually wore by an inch, gloved me to the shoulders in white kid, put a very decollete corsage of white satin and lace onto me. And then she produced a little tight pair of black velvet knickers, which only reached to the middle of my thighs and were fastened there with diamond buckles and big jewelled buttons, leaving the frills of my drawers exposed. Girls' transparent black stockings strained tightly up to the corsets held up by garters of blue satin just above my knees. The frills of my drawers were constantly exposed. Then Phoebe put me in girls' patent leather shining slippers with diamond buckles and scarlet Louis Quinze heels five and a half inches high, setting off my legs and feet.
A short-sleeved black velvet coat, made in the style of Fragonard's pictures, lined with white satin and smart with jewelled buttons, was slipped over my bodice and cut tightly into my corseted waist. It was open in front and showed my decolletage, my swelling bosom, and my girl's throat. My hair was taken down, arranged in long shining curls, and held back from my face with a white satin ribbon tied in an enormous bow. Earrings, necklaces, and bracelets completed this costume. What made it still more humiliating was a horrible arrangement in front of the tight knickers. A grotesque leather codpiece covered and cupped my penis, to bring exaggerated attention to it.
In this degrading dress, Phoebe dragged me with jeers along the passages of my own house to Helen's bedroom.
I was in tears. Helen chained my hands behind me and fixed little black fetters of polished steel on my ankles. She was deliciously dressed in pink satin.
"Turn around, Miss. High Heels," she said sternly.
"That is your name for the future-Miss. Dennis High Heels; the only name you will be known by. Turn around and let me see that the seams of your delicate stockings are straight." She showed me to myself in the mirrors. I looked just like a freakish grown-up girl wearing the external costume of a boy for some fantastic masquerade.
"Oh Helen," I moaned "you can't show me off dressed like this. You promised that I should be dressed as a girl."
"You certainly aren't dressed as a young lady, Dennis," she said with a laugh. "Young ladies don't show the frills of their pantaloons as a rule, nor so much pretty stocking. Nor do they wear flaunting scarlet heels as high as yours. Only improper women and young effeminate gentlemen wear five and a half inch heels on their dainty shoes."
"But the codpiece in front-that's horrible."
"You will wear that, dear, as the symbol of your subjection to my sex, the sign that the sex of women is imposed over your sex."
Handcuffed and fettered in this dress I was carried downstairs in Phoebe's arms into the drawing room, and presented to my neighbors assembled for dinner. I could have died of shame. Congratulations were showered upon Helen.
"What an improvement!" cited Mrs. Dawson, the vicar's wife. "He is very like Denise."
"Yes, I wish Denise could have stayed," said Helen, "for us to compare them. She has gone home to her aunt this afternoon, where I am afraid she is not very happy."
The ladies crowded round me, the men guffawed contemptuously.
"I think the fetters and handcuffs complete the dress so prettily," said Lady Hartley.
"The shoes are very smart," Lady Hartley continued. "High-heeled girls' shoes are such a good thing for wilful and disobedient young gentlemen."
"He has certainly never looked so pretty," said Guy Repton with a snigger. "I am sure he ought to be very grateful to his young stepsister for the dainty care with which she has dressed and moulded his figure."
Thus they talked of me as though I were nothing more than a statue. I stood red with shame. During dinner I was made to stand up at the centre of the table before them all with my heels together, and was only allowed to eat when they were having dessert. After dinner I shuffled in my fetters into the drawing room. Helen placed me in a chair with my feet on a satin footstool, gave me some embroidery to work at with my gloved fingers, and told me to be silent.
At ten o'clock she took the work away. "You mustn't spoil your pretty eyes, dear," she said. "And you mustn't read a novel for you would soil those dainty white kid gloves with the cover, and you mustn't dance for your scarlet heels are too high. You had better come with me. Violet, will you come too?"
Helen slid back the panel of the punishment room, and made me lie face downward on a white satin ottoman. She placed a white satin cushion under my bosom to lift it up.
"Hold up your head, Evelyn High Heels. That's right." She took a little patent leather strap and bound my white-gloved hands tightly behind me. Then she carefully turned up the lace frills and strapped my legs together above the knees. With a third biting little patent leather strap, she fixed my ankles together. Finally with a fourth strap, she tied my feet back to my hands in the most painful fashion.
"Violet will you see that Miss. High Heels keeps her pretty face up and does not move."
Violet took a book and sat down in a comfortable chair beside the ottoman. She would not even deign to speak with me when I was dressed as Dennis.
I was so strained in my miserable position that I could not keep still, and holding my head back and face high in the air wracked my neck. Yet, if I stirred Violet pinched my calves mercilessly, and if I lowered my face to rest my neck, she boxed my ears until my head sang.
"I thought you loved me, Violet," I said.
"I loved a very pretty girlfriend called Denise," she replied coldly.
"How do you like being a man, Miss. High Heels? Keep your bright little slippers still! It is not entire joy being a man after all is it? It would have been, had you remained a girl."
Helen and Miss. Priscilla came back in an hour, sent Violet to bed, and took down my knickers.
"We are going to start you off on your new career as a high-heeled young gentleman with a good birching," said Helen.
Helen birched me in this ridiculous costume until I thought my head would burst. They removed my knickers and laid me again on my face on the ottoman. They doubled back my legs and tied my right foot up to my right gloved elbow, my left foot to the left elbow, my hands, of course, being still strapped behind me. Then they dragged my thighs apart and secured them in this position. Helen took a new birch. In her exquisite rustling frock of pink satin, her little satin slippers peeping restlessly out beneath the skirt, her face flushed and radiant with enjoyment, she looked wonderfully pretty. She stood beside me with her back to my head. Holding my left foot in her left hand, she flogged me between the thighs, attacking the soft white flesh viciously.