For a minute I felt quite at a loss what to do. How much did Mademoiselle know? How was I to undertake such a task as she suggested with the girl I was engaged to? Should I blurt out the truth at once and say it was impossible with my future wife. And then there were Maud and Agnes. They might fly at me, Maud especially. And Agnes. I recollected that day in the wood, as no doubt did she. 'Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot?' Beatrice had asked her and had made me teach her the exact meaning of the query.
'Go!' said Mademoiselle, and she stood up, pointing to Beatrice, and gave me a slap on the back below the waist just as though I were an infant in frocks.
I considered the subject no further. I felt compelled to obey, trusting to my usual good fortune for extrication from the mess. And notwithstanding Beatrice's threats, which I knew were perfectly sincere, notwithstanding all my apprehensions of the bondage I was perfectly certain was in store for me as her husband (apprehensions, I may observe, since fully realized), I was possessed by some strange infatuation for Beatrice which made me anxious above all things not to offend her.
What could give her greater offence than to violate her under cover of the card Mademoiselle forced her to wear?
Of course I felt naughty, but my passion was dominated by this reasoning.
'Oh, Mademoiselle!' I exclaimed. 'You are punishing me, not Beatrice.'
'Nonsense!' she answered. 'I have not birched Beatrice. I shall birch you if you are such a recreant knight.'
'It is immoral.'
'Oh, no, Miss Julia! Love is not immoral. Perhaps, however, you do not care for your cousin.'
'I–I-I think I care for her too much.'
'And pray,' instantly retorted Mademoiselle, 'what then about your professions to myself?'
I was dumbfounded. I felt as though I had been struck.
In a dazed state I went without another word up to where Beatrice reclined and knelt down between her feet. I placed my arms round her and kissed her lips.
She murmured. I repeated the kisses. She opened her eyes in a dreamy way and looked at me.
'Oh, it is you, Julian!' she uttered, putting her arms about me, not sufficiently awake to know where she was. 'I was dreaming. Dear boy, you may kiss me again! I suppose they have gone to bed. Where am I? What's this thing on my breast? Don't press it against me.'
I kissed her again and she kissed me. I slipped my hand down underneath her dress, on to her knees, and let it glide higher up.
'Oh! Oh! Oh! You must-you must kiss me there!'
'Beatrice!' exclaimed Mademoiselle.
At the sound of her voice Beatrice started up and rubbed her eyes, leaving me still kneeling.
'Oh, I must have been dreaming!' she declared, flushing up to her eyes. 'Julia, you wretch, how dared you take advantage of me?'
'Nice dreams for a young lady! Kiss me there!' went on Mademoiselle. 'Where pray?'
'Oh, Mademoiselle!'
'And what about that card? Sit down again, Miss. Lift up your skirts to your waist-all of them. Statuo, 'I place,' Julia, pro, 'before.' '
'Why shouldn't I?' rejoined Beatrice. Desperately and with ravishing carelessness she obeyed Mademoiselle's injunction.
'There,' exclaimed Mademoiselle. 'Maud, Agnes, look at your sister. See how she absolutely gives herself up to the embraces of the first person who invites her. Wicked, abandoned girl. Go to my room instantly. And you, Julia, come with me. The heroine of the novel, a prostitute indeed! I suspected there was more than you wished me to suppose, Maud.'
'Indeed, Mademoiselle,' began Maud.
'Go to bed,' interrupted Mademoiselle, 'and you, Agnes, go too.'
Beatrice, accustomed to the role of bete noire, went off without saying anything more. Maud and Agnes bade Mademoiselle good night and left me with her.
As soon as they had gone Mademoiselle turned to me with a certain amount of anger in her gesture.
'Have you ever kissed Beatrice like that before,' she asked, scrutinizing me closely.
I at once remembered the night of the dance. I recollected the whipping I had from Agnes by Beatrice's orders for whipping Beatrice herself, my head under Beatrice's petticoats, I-
'No need to reply, I can see it in your face. And Agnes-'
'Yes,' I replied, hanging my head.
'Maud of course, and myself, and Elise, and your mamma-every woman you meet in fact.'
Now this seemed unfairly hard upon me. It was their doing more than mine.
'Go along,' continued Mademoiselle, 'to my room with me.'
When we arrived Beatrice was standing by the fireplace.
Mademoiselle entered the room with an imperious sweep of her garments.
'Undress yourself at once and completely,' she directed Beatrice.
Beatrice immediately commenced sobbing.
Mademoiselle opened a drawer and took out her jewelled whip.
At the sight of it, the culprit, without delay but not without protests, unloosened her bodice, her gown, her underclothing, petticoat after petticoat, her drawers, until at last she stood in her chemise.
'Take that off,' ordered Mademoiselle.
With a deep blush of shame but no hesitation, Beatrice obeyed, thus saving her skin.
Mademoiselle laid down the whip.
I gazed at Beatrice. She was surpassingly lovely. Her confusion heightened her charms in a most remarkable degree. But pretty bashfulness and alarm like that of a graceful fawn were not her only characteristics as she stood there in her stockings and shoes but otherwise completely naked, a condition which the contrast of the stockings rendered more emphatic. 301
'Now, Julia,' exclaimed Mademoiselle, 'do not stand there as if you were moonstruck, gazing and gazing in that idiotic manner. Upon my word you will wear out my patience. Take off your cousin's stockings and then undress yourself.'
The contact of my hands with Beatrice's soft warm full limbs which resembled the delicious plumpness of a scarcely ripe peach, communicated a strong fire to my veins and caused my brain to whirl. I was in a state of violent commotion and the tender glances which fell upon me from Beatrice's half-closed eyes, greatly increased my enthusiasm, making me fully aware of her own state. It was very evident that my execution of Mademoiselle's direction was very agreeable to Beatrice. She pressed her legs against me more than there was any occasion for; and it is these voluntary and gratuitous caresses which I have always found the most irresistible and intoxicating.
When her stockings we're off, Mademoiselle made Beatrice stand upon a low cane stool, which served as an admirable pedestal.
'Now, Julia,' said Mademoiselle, from the chair where she reclined in easy comfort, 'follow suit. You will then have an opportunity of comparing yourselves and of observing your points of difference. What a pity Maud is not here to model you both. By-the-bye, first hang that card again round Beatrice's neck!'
With a deep sigh and flush I slowly divested myself of my clothing and in a few moments stood before Beatrice and Mademoiselle absolutely naked, and feeling so guilty and ashamed that I covered my face with my hands. Beatrice's nakedness and Mademoiselle's full toilette, her low dress, accentuated my sense of my own state, and my consciousness of it, to a bewildering degree.
I am quite sure as I recall the scene that the whole spice of it lay in the difference of sex.
It was the sense of that difference which overwhelmed us both and so delighted Mademoiselle. With my feminine garments I felt I had put off all the nonsense about hermaphroditism-for nonsense I at that time felt it to be-though, now today, after my experience with Lord Alfred Ridlington, I stoutly denied to myself that it was nonsense; and as I now gazed at myself in the glass, and passed my hands over my body as I stood ready, in petticoat and body camisole, to do my tea gown, and proceed to Mademoiselle's boudoir, an indignant assertion of my hermaphroditic nature if not of absolute feminacy rose to my lips.
