them beautifully and treat them like dainty convicts. That is the only way to keep the silly creatures in good order,' she said sternly.
I ate my dinner quickly, while the longing to be punished tingled through my veins. Already I imagined that I could feel Helen's quick little daintily gloved fingers binding my wrists behind me with satin ribbons and adjusting my feet in exquisite finery. As soon as dinner was over, cigarettes and coffee were handed round. I lit a cigarette. It was two years since I had smoked one, and oh how I enjoyed it now! I leaned back in my chair, a smile of delight upon my face, as I relished the rich tobacco.
There was to be a dance for the people of the village after dinner in the village hall, and we were all to go in to it. Helen rose.
'Mr. Repton,' she said, 'will you kindly take the gentlemen down to the village hall when they are ready. There are two motorcars. They can come back for us. We ladies will come in for the fun a little while later. After that you are all welcome to come back here; we will have our own little dance and some supper.'
'Certainly, Miss. Deverel,' said Guy Repton. He cast a fiendishly lascivious glance in my direction.
The other two ladies rose and Helen said to them, 'Bring your cigarettes, all of you except Denise. I can't have you standing in the corner, Denise, with a cigarette between your lips.'
Blushing, I laid my cigarette in the ashtray and followed the ladies from the room.
As they crossed the hall, I heard Lady Hartley say to Helen, 'I thought that I read on the sole of Denise's slipper that you were thinking of a quite different punishment for her.'
'Yes,' replied Helen, 'standing in the corner I look upon as a preliminary. The real punishment will be inflicted later on after supper.'
'It sounds like a curious one-'the glass boxes.''
'I think it is interesting and ingenious. You shall see it. I am quite sure you will approve.'
I was curious myself as to what the punishment was going to be- curious and frightened.
We all went into a small parlour. It was a lovely little room decorated in white and gold with a polished parquet floor scattered with thick white rugs of Persian silk. It was brightly illuminated with shaded electric lamps, and a cheerful fire burned upon the hearth. The ladies took their seats in comfortable chairs about the fire with an air of eager expectation. They continued to smoke their cigarettes as Helen placed me in the middle and handed a little silver buttonhook to her young cousin Doris.
'Doris, put Denise's hands back into her gloves and button them carefully,' she said.
I gave my hands to Doris, who smoothed the tight white kid gloves over my fingers and fixed the buttons while Helen went over to a bureau. She opened a drawer and came back carrying a mysterious leather case and a number of strong black leather straps with big metal buckles shining upon them. Helen placed the leather case on the mantel shelf and the straps on a chair. Her face was radiant, and her eyes danced with pleasure.
'Now, Denise, we are going to truss you up tightly and prettily,' she said with a thrill of sinister delight in her voice. From my arms, she removed the gold bracelets that I had been wearing to keep my gloves stretched tight. Then, on each arm, where the bracelets had been, she buckled a broad, black leather strap very tightly. Neither the metal buckles nor the eyeholes were at the ends of the straps so that after the belt had been fastened, two broad ends hung from each of my arms. Helen tied the ends in a knot and passed them back through the oval buckles. The leather straps were on the outside of my arms, and on the inside of each strap, a little steel ring was stoutly sewn. Helen produced a tiny bar of polished steel with a spring hook at each end of it. She forced the hooks to snap onto the steel rings, pushing my arms together with a strength of which I should never have believed her capable.
'There,' she said, 'I can now tie your wrists comfortably.' She sat down.
'Stand with your back to us, Denise.' My elbows almost touched in the small of my back and my shoulders were drawn back most painfully. An extraordinary sense of helplessness, delightful and at the same time alarming, overwhelmed me. Slowly and with hesitation I obeyed my cruel feminine tyrant. I stood in front of her chair with my back toward her, and I offered my daintily gloved wrists for her to bind. There were mirrors set into the wall panels and I could see myself in my glistening white frock, which delightfully reflected the lights, from the buckles and pearls gleaming on my satin slippers to the curls of my exquisitely coiffured head, as I stood in this humiliating position of subjection. Yet how the spectacle aroused my passions! I felt dreadfully excited.
'Keep quite still now, Denise,' said Helen, with a laugh. 'Have you ever had your hands tied together for bad behaviour before?'
'Never, Helen.'
'It seems a pity that you should have to have them tied up on an evening when you look so pretty and are so delightfully dressed.'
My girlish vanity made me answer with a smile of confusion, 'If I have got to have my hands tied behind me I would rather be prettily dressed than not for the ceremony.' The ladies laughed and I blushed. Lady Hartley cried out, 'That is charming of you, Denise.'
I felt Helen's hands on my body and suddenly-was it in a panic, or was it to prolong the delight I felt? I began to struggle. But my arms were already bound, and the struggle was soon over. In the mirror I saw my hands suddenly interlaced with Helen's. They were fluttering like four doves. Our four hands separated. Helen's hands were holding the ends of a black leather strap, which encircled my wrists. She drew it tighter and tighter.
'Oh, oh, you are hurting me, Helen,' I protested.
'You shouldn't make it necessary for me to hurt you, darling,' she answered. And then she tied the leather and passed it through the oval steel buckle as she had done with the other straps.
'That will do,' she said, rising briskly. My arms hung down behind me in their delicate long kid gloves, inert, useless. She took me by the elbow.
'Take care how you walk on your high heels now that your hands are tied behind you Denise. Point your toes and arch your pretty insteps!'
She led me to a corner by the fire and placed me in it with my face to the wall. 'Hold your head up darling! That's right! Put your high heels together, and turn out the pointed toes. Let me see!'
She stooped down and picked up the train of my dress. She proceeded to wind it tightly round my legs, binding them in its folds and exposing to view my ankles and feet. She fixed it at my knees with a leather strap.
'Now stand without moving,' she ordered, and with the handle of her fan, she gave me a sharp smack on my bare white shoulder.
'Take care! If I see a flutter of the butterfly bows or a flash of the diamond buckles on your daintily slippered feet, I will lock a tight pair of fetters over your gossamer silk stockings, locked round your slender ankles. You will be bound so fast that you won't be able to twitch one of your toes.'
'Oh, Helen,' I sighed. But it was not a sigh of alarm. It was a sigh of voluptuous, languorous desire.
Strange as it may seem, it was absolutely delicious to be standing daintily in the corner with my arms and hands cruelly bound behind me in my exquisite satin frock. I loved the sensation of the long girls' gloves of supple white kid. I was nothing more than a pretty punished thing of ribbons and pearls. But to have my ankles in their girls' lustrous transparent open-worked white silk stockings fettered tightly together too! The thought of standing in a corner with my delicate feet unable to move in their exquisitely cut high-heeled slippers of white satin and delicate bows was nearly more than I could bear. To see my round pink insteps gleaming daintily through the lace insertions of stockings-stockings that only the richest of heiresses would wear at a ball in the London season! The mere thought of it made me almost swoon with delight. This is what I had dreamed of. I could realize my deepest desires by a single movement. An irresistible impulse to act out was upon me.
'I don't see the use of my wearing beautiful satin slippers with valuable diamond buckles if I have to hide them in a corner,' I pretended to grumble.
'Nonsense, Miss. Denise,' replied Mrs. Dawson, 'it is delightful for us to see an elegant young lady with pretty feet smartly shod standing obediently in the corner.' She evoked a picture of myself in my mind that carried me away. I was nearly delirious with pleasure. I wanted nothing more than to feel the binding powers of those fetters.
'Mayn't I even do this?' I asked impertinently, and I stretched out a foot, pointing the toe. I quickly drew it back again. An exclamation of indignation at my wilfulness broke from the group of ladies.
'Lock and chain together those satin slippered feet at once, Helen!' cried Lady Hartley.
'I will indeed,' answered Helen. 'Come Violet, Miss. Hartley, help me please.' With the assistance of the two young ladies she literally carried me from the corner and lifted me onto a chair.
'Support her please,' said Helen. I was quite helpless, with my satin train swathed around my legs and my
