Mabel

lessons!'

She detached the poor slave and rang for the maid.

'Bridget,' she told her, 'this girl will have to do three hours of housework. We shall make her sew, iron and clean the rooms. I intend to oblige her every day to stitch for me some pretty ornaments of material, but for to-day we shall make her do the washing only. Let's go down to the wash-room!'

With Bridget and the governess on each side of her Miss Sunway went down to the cellar of the castle where a modern wash-room had been installed.

'Did you get down my dirty linen, Bridget?' Miss von Berner asked.

'Yes, ma'am, the one you were wearing yesterday and the one that was in your trunks. In all there are mine pairs of stockings, three slips, six handkerchiefs, two bras and fine pairs of drawers. I also have then linen which Mabel was wearing about her when she arrived at the castle.'

'Perfect,' said Dorothea. 'And what about you, Bridget, have you got dirty linen of your own? Mabel must wash it since she's your maid.'

Bridget blushed with pleasure and pointed at a parcel in a corner.

'There, I have pyjamas, two hygienic towels, stockings, a chemise and two pairs of panties. If you'll allow me, I'll add the one I'm wearing now and which is rather dirty.'

'But of course, do.'

Bridget lifted up her skirts, took off the blue panties which Mabel knew only too well. She picked them up and tossed them at the girl's face.

'Here you are, slave, and let these be clean!'

'I do hope so,' Miss von Berner added, 'looking at Mabel severely. I'll give you three hours to wash all that And I'd better warn you that I'm very particular about my own linen. If I find the least stain on it I'll tear the skin off your bottom with a horsewhip. Now, to work!'

She cast her slave a despising look and went out with Bridget, taking good care of padlocking the door behind her. Mabel could come and go but she was a prisoner just the same since the only window was an air-vent and the room was lit by electricity.

The girl sighed deeply. So this is where she had sank: down to washing the dirty linen of the governess and even that of the chambermaid!

She started working. First of all, she looked after Dorothea's; linen. It was handling the gossamer bras, and the silk or satin drawers, the slave could not help thinking of the splendid flesh and the perfect shape which these clothes had imprisoned. She felt a strange sensation thinking that what she was washing Dorothea herself had soiled with the most intimate contact of her body, that it was Dorothea whose triumphant breasts had caressed the material with their hard nipples, that it was Dorothea who had worn under her skirt these coquettish pink panties and had soiled them… Suddenly, without thinking, she took a pair of panties and smelled them. Its odour was heady like a voluptuous perfume. She lost her head and kissed ardently the tepid material.

Then, almost at once, she was ashamed of her gesture and resumed her working. The chambermaid, although coquettish, had but a relative degree of hygiene and her linen was frankly dirty, and its cleaning was particularly odious to the unhappy heiress.

Three long hours elapsed in frantic work. Mabel had just finished when her two mistresses came back. Dorothea ordered her slave to show her the different articles of her clothing one after the other and she examined them scrupulously, with eyebrows knitted by concentration.

'It's all right,' she said at last, 'quite perfect. Bridget, have a look at yours and then send Mabel up to my room for the lesson of humiliation.'

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.'