Augustus and Lady Maude

I. SOL

I. Augustus to Lady Maude

Wight, 2 June

My dear Maude, You may be sure that I did not intend to write to you so soon after your departure for Lake Garda. Yet I need your advice and counsel in a matter of great delicacy. Indeed, I do not exaggerate when I tell you that it is a choice upon which depends all my future happiness. If a man may not consult his nearest and dearest female cousin on such occasions, where is he to look for assistance? I am tempted to believe that my life was changed utterly last night, soon after nine o'clock. Dr. Raspail would tell you, of course, that such mental impulses on my behalf go only to prove my condition of neurasthenia. I cannot help these opinions on the part of others. Let me tell you first of the event and then beg your assistance. I went last night to the recital rooms to hear Poland's greatest son-the mane of splendid hair and the fingers so white and thin-perform a double prodigy. We were to burn in the romantic grandeur of Brahms's “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel,” having first had our spirits soothed by the elegaic cadences of my beloved Robert Schumann's “Etudes Symphoniques.” There is something so intimate and sensual about a recital of this sort on a warm summer evening. One sits among red plush and gilding, the Steinway polished to a liquid gloss of honey, the keys smooth to touch and sounding with such cool precision. One's gaze caresses the bare neck and frail shoulder blades of a fine young woman in a low-cut dress. The bone so slender and the skin so sleek with humid air. There one observes a girl of sixteen, sitting meek and demure as a nun in the spell of the music, the sweep of her nut-brown hair like the veil of a novice framing a face of pale oval beauty, her loveliness lit by the steady gaze of hazel eyes.

Yet there is nothing more sensuous than the fine piano itself, its scents of velvet and wood, the fragrance of its polish, the pure white felt of its hammers. If ever there was a magic enchantment which put to sleep the court and castle, it was such clear and elegant music as this. So I thought to myself as a silence fell upon the beauty of women and the men in their formal dress and decorations. Then the spell was cast in the plaintive descending chords which are the prelude to the “Etudes Symphoniques.” I was so absorbed in thoughts of Schumann, the great romantic angel who died in the madhouse, his soul torn between the sublime inner music of paradise and the torment of the devil's fugues, that I could not have told you if there was a woman within a hundred yards of me. My eye came to rest on her the first time and I scarcely noticed anything about her.

She was eighteen, I suppose, and she had straight blond hair which was put up into a coquettish little bun on the top of her head. It was worn rather as a little girl might, giving an appearance which is both prim and yet somehow provoking. We were sitting at opposite ends of a crescent-shaped row of seats. It was not surprising, then, that my eye should rest upon her from time to time. Again the plaintive elegiac chords; their harmonies extended as suggestively as only the great Schumann could do. Without being at first aware of it, I was looking at her again. You will laugh at me, my dearest Maude. I know you will. And yet I beg you to try and understand. She was no ravishing beauty. I cannot tell you what it was in her race which drew my gaze back to her so often that, at last, I felt she and every other person in the recital room must have observed the oddity of my conduct. No, my beloved cousin, it was not the face of a great beauty. Does that matter? Petrarch, they say, only saw his earthly goddess Laura De Sade on a single occasion. And yet, the greatest of all love poets devoted the rest of his life to her praise. It was not beauty alone which moved such a man to worship. What would you say if you could see my own goddess of the recital, who looked bored by Schumann at the end of the second etude? It is a rather wan and sulky little face. The eyes are a darkish hazel. The nose is somewhat long and pointed and the chin too narrow to permit of that oval beauty which is so much admired by purists. Yet still my gaze returned to her as the mournful sweetness of Schumann broke out at last into the grand leaping chords of the final variation. In her plain black dress and red shoes with tall heels to increase her apparent height, one had a good idea of her figure. She has a slim and almost fragile young body, made for youthful pleasure rather than the full maturity of womanhood. How can one imagine such a body at forty or fifty? I, at any rate, fail to. So there I sat, as the divine Petrarch of the sonnets must have done on a similar occasion. Alas, I am no writer of verses. My less worthy pursuit was to find out whatever I could about the girl who had held so much of my attention for fully half an hour.

As you will guess, I had gone to the recital as one of Lady Anna's party. Does that not make my conduct the more extraordinary? I might have paid court easily enough to one of my own female companions. Did I wish for proud pale-skinned beauty at twenty-five?

How easily I could have given attention to a dozen or such a kind. Was my preference for tall graceful beauty-the oval beauty of a face framed by the veil of brown hair? A dozen more waited to be wooed at sixteen years old! It would not do. Despite all that conscience and decorum could urge, I was unable to draw my thought away from the object of my curiosity. I will tell you, my dear, how far gone I was before the Schumann variations were over. I already began to indulge in flights of fancy, assuming that I had won the heart-or at least the attention-of the sulky little minx with her pert little bun of blond hair. I imagined what I would say to her-the conversations we would hold between us-though I had never heard her voice. I pictured us together in places I am sure she has never seen and upon which her eyes would open with wonder. There we were on that terrace just below San Miniato, which overlooks all the beauty of Florence and the Arno.

Or else we walked through the gardens of the Prado in the warmth of a Spanish autumn and, later, smelt the eucalyptus and pine in the avenues of the Escorial. We ate in the most elegant restaurants of the Via Veneto-or Florian's in the Piazza San Marco at Venice. And then again we dined in the workers' cafes of the Porte de La Chapelle or by candlelight under the arcading of the Place des Vosges. Florence and Rome, Paris and Madrid, Venice and the Escorial were closer then than my companions. You see how far gone I was, my dear friend? You must not, however, believe that I fell suddenly in love with the girl-all at a thunderclap. Interest became preoccupation-and preoccupation became obsession before the evening was done. As Guenevere is made to say in her defence, it was as if one should Slip slowly down some path worn smooth and even, Down to a cool sea on a summer day… It does not convince you, my dear Maude. Does it? I cannot excuse-I cannot defend-I can scarcely explain my new infatuation. Yet I am infatuated. You must believe that. By the time that the interval in the recital came, and our party withdrew to take the air for ten minutes on the terrace, I could not banish her from my mind. “Whoe'er she be! That not-impossible she!” As we strolled under the round globes of the lamps on their ornate wrought-iron pillars, the gowns of the women were pale and luminous. It was a time between lamplight and twilight.

What a fool I made of myself in conversation, dear Maude. I was possessed, you see, by the thought that once the recital was over the girl and I would go our separate ways. I should never know who she was and never, never be able to identify her. You see the state I was in-and still am-ma chere amie? So I said airily that I had seen a girl across the recital room, whom I could swear I knew and yet could not think of her name. I invited each of my companions to supply it, if she might. Miss Prince looked blank and Lady Bab stared at me as if I must have been mad. As for Lord Significance, he would not deign to take the cigar from his mouth. What could I want with so common a girl as the one they heard me speak of? It was Miss Prince who took pity on me at last and said she believed my goddess to be a counter-girl somewhere-a Julie Something. It was enough! With that I would track her to the ends of time and space. She was Julie!

Julie! The name rang in my mind. My heart bounded as if I already clasped her in my arms. As we walked back into the buzz of talk, the recital room warm and filling with the devotees of Brahms, I tried to check my feelings. A gentleman does not entertain such grand passions for a shopgirl. It can lead only to disagreeable consequences. Is that not the truth, my darling cousin? My new love would either spurn me with the laughter of a street Arab or else her mean little eyes would measure the depth of my purse and calculate what could be emptied from it. Am I not right, my dearest Maude? I am.

You know it. And yet I did not care. Oh, I might make a fool of myself and be bitterly miserable when the bizarre romance was ended. I did not care. Our greatest anxiety is for the loss of a chance which will never come again. As the clear, crisp piano notes sounded the twirls and twiddles of the motif which begins the Handel Variations, I dreaded the loss of the unknown nymph as greatly as if it were to be the death of the person who had been dearest to me until an hour before. I watched her sit down again, Maude, and I wondered as anyone might what a girl of such common stock was doing at a recital of this kind. I believe she was there only to assist her companion or employer. It was an elderly and palsied woman who sat by her side.

Now do not scold me, my dearest, for I know you will think me a fool. Help me, in the name of that friendship and love between us since our cradles rocked side by side in the same rhythm! I must know her! I must find her! I must have her! You are too wise to believe that a man of noble birth can only be content with women of his own class. He needs from time to time the stronger, more common appetite which drives him to a sturdy blonde like the vulgar shopgirl, Maggie, or else to a plump maiden like Miss Nicoll with her halo of curls. My case is much the worse, for my desire leaves no choice.

It must be Julie. I write because you know the girls of this resort so well and have made them objects of your affectionate and amorous study! If anyone can tell me who she be and where she comes from, it must be you. As the grand, swinging chords of the final variation concluded the recital and the applause burst upon one's eardrums, I knew that I must write to you this very minute. I send the letter express. I would bring it myself, did I not fear to lose all sight of my slim, sullen Julie! Your loving cousin, Augustus Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude II. Lady Maude to Augustus Lago di Garda, 5 June My own Augustus, What a goose you are! A goose, of course, to lose your heart to such a little minx as Julie and a greater one not to know the prize specimen upon whom you have picked. One really does not know whether to laugh you out of your romantic stupidity or to grieve that you have grown to such age and not learnt to control your temper more firmly.

Though I am but a month your elder, I feel as if the wisdom of centuries belonged to me when I hear you talk as you do. The blonde with the prim little bun and the sulky little face-a hard and mean little face, I have always thought it-who is she? When you told me she was called Julie and that her services were required merely to companion an old and infirm woman-who is the dowager Lady Stacker, by the way-I knew at once. Oh, my poor Augustus, you have set your choice upon a common shopgirl indeed! She who sits upon the stool behind the counter in a bookseller's shop which is little better than that of a marchand des joumaux. I shall be surprised if you do not go and ask her to measure you out an ounce of pipe tobacco. Not find her again? How could you fail? You may stand at the shop window hour after hour, if you choose, and gaze your fill upon Julie. Believe me, I know the plain black dress and the little red shoes with their high heels to give extra inches to her height. Would you like to see her more fully revealed for your adoration? Go there one day when Julie is attired less formally, in blouse and the tight denim fit of working-drawers, as she lifts and carries boxes of new books among the shelves. See the slender legs and slim young hips tightly outlined as if the lewd little bitch were naked! Consider the softer but still pert cheeks of Julie's bottom! Look closely at the sulky little teaser, my dear Gussie. Then tell me if Julie is the type of goddess for whom Petrarch swore an eternal and Platonic love! If you doubt me still, enter and buy a book of any kind. Hand her the money and listen to her voice as she counts it into the till or thanks you-if she has the grace for thanks. Tell me then if the little slut's common whining tone is the true accent of Laura de Sade!

Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore! That is what you would say, would you not, to these words of mine? But you are not the Moor of Venice, man cher ami, nor shall I be Iago to betray you. Least of all is a painted young minx like Julie to be taken for Desdemona. She is one of Mr. Bowler's working-girls. Though he may not yet have got his hand into Julie's knickers, she will prove no vestal virgin. Let us have done, my dear, with the willful amours you pretend to with such creatures. Jacqueline Grant, the toast of every soldier, was to be your great love, was she not? And, next day, the saddler's window-dresser was to be the next lady of the manor! It will not do, Gussie! By all means enjoy such heroines for what they are but put aside these foolish romantick notions. I know too well what pleasures may be indulged with such specimens of my own sex. In the arbours of Lesbos I have tasted them often. But shopgirls and trollops are not to be the objects of such feelings as you cherish for Julie. And there let it end. Really, my dear! I was about to write to you of the delights of Lago di Garda when your letter came. I am so put out that my account must wait until after lunch. Till then, I am Your own loving Maude Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude III. Lady Maude to Augustus Lago di Garda, 5 June p.m. My dear Augustus, Having disposed of the disagreeable matter of that little “tart" Julie this morning-the letter went by the Desenzano steamer just before lunch-I now settle down to write of pleasanter things. I shall have some fun here with the golden-skinned cat-eyed Miss Jones whom Mr. Bowler has brought to guard his fashion salon, and with the Scandinavian nymph Marit, on whom the said Jones is told to “keep an eye.” More of Marit and Miss Jones in a moment-the naked truth, dear Gussie. But first a word about this most drowsy summer lake. “Airs, languid airs, abound.” You should have come with us, you know. We have no neurasthenia here. I write this while sitting in the shade of the pergola, which is quite overgrown with purple wisteria. It forms a walk along the edge of the gardens furthest from the terrace of the Villa Lola. Small wonder if half the royalty and nobility of Europe seems to fill Gardone this season. From where I sit, one has an Olympian view ten miles across smooth water to the lemon groves above little Malcesine. To the south, through a pale mist of heat, one sees the flat Lombardy plain, running east to Verona and Venice. And there is the promontory of Sirmione with its clustered cypress trees, the “olive-silvery Sirmio,” where sweet Catullus loved and sang. Look north, and you see the lake narrow between sharp peaks of Alpine hills near the little frontier port of Riva. In this warm weather the pine trees shed their needles, so that one walks down the zig zag path to the little town through a private garden sweet with the heavy resinous perfume of these conifers. You will guess, at once, that this private domain belongs to the illustrious poet, our neighbour, a man of exotic tastes in his dealings with the young ladies who attend him! He makes us free of it, allowing us a delicious walk down to the shore of the placid lake. What a place this is to take one's pleasures, my dear Augustus! How voluptuous here are the pale limbs which tremble with desire on richest velvet! How white a young girl's shoulders or flanks when laid bare under this brilliant sun! In secret groves, the beauty of mature womanhood shudders under the lascivious caress of her pitiless lovers. Girlhood at fifteen cries with alarm as the first surge of passion overwhelms her Mormorvan con voci roche e lente la fontane invisible tra i pini His immortal lines anticipate the pleasures to be enjoyed, where the perfume of roses fills the air of closed gardens.

The hidden fountains murmur among the trees and the sun stabs at the lovers, a dagger bright as diamonds through the branches. This place will do for me, my dear cousin. While our famous neighbour meditates his next stanzas and Mr. Bowler stays a while at the Hotel Rialto in Venice, I am mistress here. Knowing my nature as you do, you may imagine whether or not it suits me to have the lynx-eyed Miss Jones at twenty and the nymph Marit at fifteen as my playthings.

I will tell you at once that some rascal in the past has constructed a secret spy-hole in either wall of my own boudoir which enables the occupant to watch whatever passes in the other two bedrooms. Add to all this the delights of the Villa Lola and its gardens. At night one walks on this terrace and sees the lights twinkle across the water from Malcesine and Bardolino. The air is laden with scents of thyme and eucalyptus, ancient as Catullus himself. One hears the distant beat of the steamer's paddles, the cicadas among the olive trees, and the drifting music of mandolins from a cafe in the little town below us. Enough of such things, my dear Augustus. You can find the details of geography in Herr Baedeker's guides. It is beauty of another sort, the knowing eyes and seductive limbs, that has made the Villa Lola memorable to me.

Yesterday afternoon, when the heat of the day began to dwindle and the sky above the lake turned a deeper blue, I took my parasol and made an excursion into our little lakeside town. It is a place constructed entirely for the pleasures of the elegant and the discerning. To either side of the pink-paved promenade, the shore at the foot of the hills extends in castellated villas with green walled gardens or cream-coloured palazzi whose waterfront windows peep out among the hanging purple of wisteria and vines. A fine crimson bougainvillea climbs to the very eaves of the Hotel Savoy. With my footman at a little distance behind me I watched the green water rock in a gentle swell as the afternoon steamer churned out from the jetty and headed north to the narrower and more mountainous end of the Lago di Garda. The street which lies behind the palms and cafes of the promenade is no mere jumble of greengrocers and coffee shops. It is the haunt of the beau monde, where the couturiers of the Via Roma or the Rue de Rivoli offer their creations next to windows displaying the finest work of the jeweller and goldsmith, which the Place Vendome could scarcely rival. Like so many temples to the goddess of beauty, these boutiques line either side of the street. If you doubt the standing of Mr. Bowler in such matters, you need only see the splendid emporium which he has taken for the summer in order to display so many velvet gowns and silken dresses. In our society, my dear Augustus, he is despised as a mere shopkeeper or a man of trade. Here he is the arbiter of style and the confidant of nobility. Many a countess or a duchess will wait her turn for half an hour of his advice in the matter of her wardrobe. In England, the squire's lady or the wives of the bourgeoisie would speak of him as “Bowler” or “the tailor,” and never pay his bill. Here in the summer society of Garda, where beauty is more than rank, he is known and addressed as “Milor.” By the same token, our neighbour the sublime poet is “Signore” to all the world.

Am I not fortunate, dear Gussie, to have “Milor” and “Signore” as my two protectors and providers in this delightful resort? So I stood in the peach-yellow sunlight of the Italian afternoon and admired Mr. Bowler's summer premises. Behind the plate-glass windows, the waxy limbs of slim mannequins stood like the figures of an entablature, motionless in morning-gowns or driving-costumes, riding breeches and promenade-dresses, silken tea-gowns or evening satin worn tight and sleek over hips and seat. You may be sure it was not the wax slaves with their innocent eyes and parted lips which had drawn a group of well-dressed gentlemen to admire the display of fashion. Among their cold polished limbs stood another figure whose warm gold skin pulsed a little with the flow of blood and the tremor of passion. It was no other than Miss Jones! It is greatly to your disadvantage, Augustus, that you have never met Miss Jones. I assure you she would soon cure you of your pale mewling attachment to the little strumpet who has had the impudence to seduce your affections at present. They call her Carissima here. How shall I describe Miss Jones to you? She is a randy little wriggler of twenty years old or so. Her figure is neat and its golden skin gives her the look of a Mediterranean or perhaps Egyptian lineage. Though she is English by speech and birth, a serpent of old Nile was perhaps her grandmother. In the tight-lidded slant of her almond eyes, in the long slope of her brown and sharp young nose, there is a hint of passion and perversity. One of her little vanities is to vary the style of her coiffure according to the fashion of her age. At fifteen years old, Miss Jones's dark hair was close-cropped. By seventeen, as if she had passed from being a working-girl to a model of sophistication, it was worn long and put up into an elegant beehive dome on the crown of her head. A year or two more and she preferred it sleek but shorter, brushed back from the tall slope of her forehead and rounded at her nape, for all the world like a randy young temple priestess of Rameses himself. Now her taste has changed again. Her crowning glory is a short upward-brushed crop of lightly curled hair. You may be sure that it was not merely the art of the young coiffeuse which had attracted the attention of these gentlemen in the warm boulevard. Miss Jones was busy among the mute immobile effigies which displayed the creations of Paris and Rome. It was not a labour to be performed in flowing hems and starched petticoats. By no means. This aforesaid “randy little wriggler” had chosen to display herself in a costume which must have stiffened the manhood of every gentleman who passed by. She wore a white blouse which fitted a little too tight for decency. One cannot deny, of course, that it told the world of her pert little breasts, nipples erect from the friction of cotton, and a slim straight back which came down to a narrow waist. You see no great harm in that, Augustus, do you? Many a schoolgirl wears such a blouse. But few beauties of the fourth or fifth forms would dare show themselves dressed from the waist down in Miss Jones's style. The little minx had availed herself of a pair of riding-jeans, which fitted tight as on the hips and thighs of a heroine riding the range!

Indeed, I swear that Miss Jones was deliberately taunting her admirers by wearing pants which were a size too small for her. You may imagine the sight she presented. In England there would have been a complaint to the magistracy and a stop put to such scandalous display.

Happily, we have stronger constitutions here. Some of those who now admired her yearned only for a chance to browse with their lips upon the delicate moulding of her bare brown neck, uncovered by the upward brushing of her dark curls, or to murmur and kiss the neat whorls of her ears with their little pearls at each lobe. The rest stared at her lower limbs and groaned with adoration. In the tight fit of denim, her legs and thighs appeared trim and quite slender, her hips lithe and perfectly rounded. Her warm gold body has the qualities of neatness and energy, a reward which any man might covet. Miss Jones's bottom was perfectly outlined by the tight seat of the denim. Its cheeks are deliciously round, yet taut and resilient, never fat.

Moreover, the pronounced upward branching of her thighs from the knees had a charmingly lewd effect. When she bends or kneels forward, the warm swellings of Miss Jones's buttocks are widely and deeply parted in a most suggestive manner. It will not surprise you, then, that those who now admired her licked their lips and sighed with adoration, each gentleman feeling that the front of his trousers had grown uncomfortably tight. There was one lad, no more than sixteen, who appeared to be carrying in his trouser pocket the head of a very large hammer. Miss Jones stared out across the sunlit promenade, the feline beauty of her almond eyes under their tight lids unmoved by the staring desire of the onlookers. Yet she was not unaware of their helpless longing. She moved about her tasks, walking with a tight little swagger to exaggerate the rounding and twitching of her bum-cheeks, as if mocking those who yearned and moaned. I crossed over to a cafe, just opposite, and ordered tea, so that I might witness the conclusion of this drama without myself being the subject of attention. One by one the men dispersed, having tried in vain to engage Miss Jones's interest by promises of every kind of reward if only she would make them lords of her bed. It was the lad with the hammer in his pocket who remained at last. By this time, the sun was slanting lower above the western hill and shooting with gold the wavelets of the lake. The girl, with a little brush, was brushing up the nap of the felt on the floor where the wax models stood. With the nimbleness of her fine-boned hands she worked energetically, driving the brush round in tight circles. What a view she offered as she worked away vigorously on all fours for the next twenty minutes!

Her head with its dark upswept curls was bowed over the task, allowing only a glimpse of her warm gold features, the sharp young nose or the almond eyes. As she toiled on hands and knees, her back was slim and straight, her waist hollowed downwards a little. The lad at the glass watched open-mouthed and wide-eyed from behind her. In such a posture, the pants-denim was tight and smooth as a skin over the deliciously rounded cheeks of Miss Jones's bottom. Better still, the shape of her figure is such that she appeared to be offering them deliberately parted-a rear access between her legs-to the lad who gazed upon her. The hammerhead in his trouser pocket seemed larger than at first and the industrious boy was evidently trying to polish it a little, as I judged. Throwing discretion to the winds, he moved forward and stood over the minx, as if anxious that she should see his interest in her. A pale dark-haired girl appeared in the shadows of the emporium and said something which attracted Miss Jones's attention. But Miss Jones, randy little piece that she is, merely glanced at the lad and then turned a malicious smile upon the other girl. Unnerved for a moment by the second girl's appearance, the lad withdrew, only to return a moment later to the object of his silent adoration. I saw the pale dark-haired girl, a solemn little spy, reappear and speak to Miss Jones again. I swear I could read the words on her lips. “It's that man, Car'-he's watching you again!” Miss Jones finished her task and stood up. She walked away to where the other girl was standing. If you have any further doubts as to her moral character, lay them to rest. With her back to the lad, Miss Jones bent over tightly, as if offering a final derisive view of what he loved so much, and looked round at the same time to see what effect her display had upon him! The sight of her backside's trim round cheeks presented in so vulgar a manner made him tremble as if in a mild seizure. He turned a moment later, thoughtful and subdued. I was intrigued to see that the hammerhead had vanished as by the wave of a magician's wand. With a malicious light in the catlike beauty of her face and a giggle on her lips, Miss Jones drew back into the shadows. When the randy young bitch returned to the Villa Lola, I had been there some time and was dressing for dinner. Hearing sounds of her in the next bedroom, I could not resist making use of the convenient peep-hole which a previous master had installed. It was not mere voyeurism on my part, Gussie. I had already watched Miss Jones display herself to her admirers in a manner which had clearly given her a secret satisfaction, however much she appeared to scorn their attention. Now I longed to see what the true effect of it would be upon the little wriggler herself. Making not a sound, I sat on a chair, removed the little round shutter, and applied my eye to the aperture. Miss Jones was standing before the long mirror, admiring herself. The dark slanting eyes with their tight heavy lids were motionless, the tall brow, sharp nose and fine-boned features made a study in immobility and composure. She seemed to hesitate and I wondered if she might restrain her triumph until she received a visit from the man to whose pleasure Mr. Bowler has assigned her. Can you not guess, my dear cousin? It is “Signore,” the sublime poet of Patria and Amore-our neighbour- whose needs Miss Jones serves. Yet he has many calls on his time and might not have had the leisure to ride her round love's steeplechase last night. So it proved to be.

Without drawing her gaze from the contemplation of her own mirrored beauty, she adjusted the three glasses of the dressing-table this way and that. I did not at first understand the purpose of what she was doing. However, Miss Jones undid her working-pants and pushed them down, stepping out of the tangle of cloth which lay about her ankles.

She also unbuttoned her blouse and shrugged it off so that it fell to the dark richness of the Persian carpet. At last she was naked, like a randy little gold-skinned odalisque or a lewd almond-eyed temple dancer. Then she turned and walked across the room with that tight lascivious little swagger of her trim hips which is her most characteristic movement, I began to understand why she had altered the angles of the triple mirrors on the dressing-table. As she walked, the randy little piece could watch herself reflected from front and rear, thanks to the triple mirror in one corner and a finely framed costume mirror that stood against the opposite wall. She made her way to the long Regency sofa with its thickly padded crimson velvet and its ornamental scroll at one end. It was on this that all the mirrors had been trained. As she lay there, on whichever side, she could see her light gold beauty reflected from the front and the back simultaneously. She stretched out naked on the soft crimson velvet, the upper half of her body turned over a little on her front and one knee drawn up slightly, which gave a delightfully saucy distortion to the perfect shape of her bottom-cheeks. Posing like this, she was the boudoir beauty-lascivious and perverse-of which Romantic Europe has dreamt this past century! There is, to be sure, a perversity in the manner in which Cara Jones uses her body, the lewd postures which she so instinctively adopts. Yet her true perversity is in her cunning young mind. By the aid of the mirrors, she was now using the sight of her own body to excite herself! As she saw the slim upward branching of her Levantine-coloured thighs, her straight slender back and narrow waist, the smooth tan of her trim bottom-cheeks, she began to caress herself gently. At first it was no more than a gentle self-stroking of those parts which are agreeable to stroke-the flanks and belly, a little firming of her nipples between finger and thumb. But the sight of her doing this to herself was as if she had been spying on a pair of lesbian lovers. Unable to resist, Miss Jones slid a hand down and intruded her fingers between her thighs. She manualised with the slow expertise of one who has had ample practice-and expert tuition!-in the art. I have always thought it of the utmost importance that a slave-girl of whatever age should be obliged to self-love regularly and should be taught to do so with skill. It relieves those troublesome feminine tensions and leads to more ready obedience of one's own commands. So, like a lewd little harem wanton, Miss Jones performed upon herself now. Yet I cannot too strongly insist that her pleasure was ten times the greater for being able to see herself do it. She is entirely self-sufficient for she loves no one as intensely as herself. I watched her enjoy the most ecstatic bliss of honeymoon romance with no other person near her. She brought herself off twice, shuddering and groaning, before the time when the maid knocked at her door to announce that dinner was to be served in half an hour. The nimble fingers seemed to heed no warning. They parted the trim gold buttocks, stroked and tickled her between them. They plagued the slippery pussy again and again, tickling the little clitoris until Miss Jones shuddered and groaned with the delicious torment of it. They milked her sly cunt until she threshed and squirmed her thighs on the fine sofa. Once she tried, without success, to spank herself. How eagerly I would have done that to her, for the little bitch made me late for dinner!

Your loving cousin, Maude

IV. Augustus to Lady Maude

Wight, 8 June

My dear Maude, Your two letters arrived together by this morning's post. I do assure you, dearest cousin, that you would never write as you do were you ever to fall truly in love. Such is my case. To you the girl upon whom all my hope is fixed appears no more than a shopkeeper's hireling. How mistaken you are, for you do not know her as I do. She does not haunt your waking dreams as she does mine. Not an hour of the day passes but I see in that mind's eye the slim elfin figure with her blond hair and moody little face-and I breathe the name of Julie. I do not doubt, my dearest, that you would take my family's part against me.

Would you not revert to the topic of my neurasthenia and suggest that I am not fit to control my life in such matters? As soon as your letters arrived, I went into town to search out my beloved image-to whom I had never addressed a single word. How my heart sprang up as I saw her at her work, just as you promised. With far more decency and devotion than the Italian lad in your letter, I gazed through the glass upon the beauty which is all the world to me. She was modestly attired in black dress and coquettish little red shoes. Yet as she stood behind the counter that fine blond hair was spread loose like a veil upon her shoulders. All the primness and knowing-ness of her previous appearance was changed to simple innocence by this alteration. What is the worst one can say of Julie? She has, perhaps, an indifferent and unsmiling air for her customers. Yet I must be more to her than they. There is a hint of sulkiness in the weaker lines of mouth and chin. The nose is perhaps rather sharp and prominent-but is that not the case with your golden-skinned Miss Jones? So you see, Maude, I am not unaware of her blemishes. To me she is beautiful despite them. I stood there and adored her at a distance until I dared do so no longer. I am loath to attract attention to myself and my feelings for this girl. As the patrons of the shop kept her busy, it was impossible for me to enter and engage her in conversation. How then was I to advance my cause? I walked away and took luncheon alone at the Grand Hotel. When it was over, I returned and walked past that window, which is to me almost the gate of paradise. Julie sat on a stool behind the counter, her head bowed as she read one of the books and the fine gold of her hair spilling loose round her face. You see? She is a young person of attainments.

She reads books. How many “shopgirls,” as you term them, indulge in such distractions? Yet still there were too many people in the room to permit me access to her. What then? I must wait until the time came for her to leave. Perhaps I would waylay her. Fall on my knees!

Beg a moment of her attention! But what if she should be escorted from the premises by some duenna? What if a young man who already aspired to remove Julie's knickers for her had a prior claim? The thought overcame me with misery. How could I, with my tormented sensibilities, set up in competition with a hobbledehoy whose brawny lust was to be vented upon this delicious creature? I withdrew and refreshed myself by a glass of Vichy water at the cafe next door. Much of the day was passed in this fashion until the premises closed their door to the public. I had great hopes. Julie would emerge in a moment and, so far as I could see, there was neither duenna nor hobbledehoy lying in wait for her. Still she did not appear. Then, a moment later, I saw her in the shop itself. Though the doors were closed, her day's work had by no means ended. Now she reappeared to stock the shelves with more books after the sales of the previous hours. You may be sure she did not risk ruin to her black dress and red shoes by wearing them as she carried the boxes and the piles of books. Julie was more conveniently dressed in the white blouse and the tight denim breeches of her working-costume. Do you suppose, Maude, that my admiration was blighted by seeing her in such utilitarian garb? Quite the reverse, I assure you! There is nothing like tight denim for revealing such figures as hers. Julie must be eighteen or nineteen years old and yet her legs and thighs are almost as slender as a child's. She has the flat curve of the belly and the backward jut of the hips which would be more common in a nymph of fourteen, scarcely on the threshold of womanhood. Combined with the way she wore her golden blond hair loose upon her shoulder blades this gives the air of a girl-child to her appearance. How could you doubt her charming innocence, my dear Maude? She turned to contemplate the depleted shelves, the jeans-denim tight and smooth over her slim fragile-looking thighs, though drawn into little sheaves of creases behind her knees. Petite and narrow-hipped though she is, there is almost an impudent little fatness to the cheeks of Julie's bottom!

I gazed through the bookshop window, enraptured by such views of her. How I adored the veil of golden blond hair which sweeps from her high crown to her shoulders! What beauty I saw in the slope of her hazel eyes, seeming all the darker for a touch of the mascara brush to their lashes. Julie, too, has a tall sloping forehead and such a sharp, rather crude young nose. Yet if there is an ugliness in any of this, it is of the kind which provokes rather than repels. She is petite, I suppose. Indeed, only her habit of choosing shoes with spiked heels makes one overlook this. With all her imperfections, I adore her. I find no fault in her at all when I observe that the cheeks of Julie's backside are such fatly rounded little globes. How I longed to feel them smacked and fondled under my hands. Just then, she bent to pick up a box of books and presented her buttocks as neatly and tautly rounded, as deeply separated as any admirer could wish. I will not weary you, my dear Maude, but I stood there a full hour in contemplation, under the pretext of waiting for some companion with whom I had made a rendezvous. Indeed, it was more man an hour before Julie emerged, locked the door behind her, and set off homeward, still in her blouse and denim pants stretched smooth on her lower limbs. How was I to accost her? Upon what pretext could I begin a conversation which was to lead to passionate romance? Of course, I dared not lose sight of her and therefore began to walk in the same direction at a discreet distance behind her, trying to think of the mot juste while my heart seemed ready to burst within me.

Do not think that I complain, dearest cousin. To walk behind Julie forever was a torment of exquisite delight. Slim and lithe, for all her lack of height, she moves with long and easy strides, the sweep of her golden blond hair rising and falling a little upon her shoulders with the motion of her steps. To see her tightly clad thighs, so slim and agile, moving in this youthful manner makes one long for her. Her buttocks are high and pert, lasciviously displayed under the pale blue of the denim seat. I may tell you from mere observation that Julie's panties are scandalously brief and tight.

Indeed, all those who have watched her at work in the bookshop while she wears the tight jeans-denim can vouch for this. The tight seat shows the outline of Julie's knickers, which are nothing more than a twist of thin cotton between her legs and a narrow rear triangle, which does little more than cover the cleavage of her hind cheeks.

So I followed the object of my desire, up the long slope of the streets and across the Queen's own square, along the upper toad, past the park and towards the new bridge. Once or twice I thought she seemed to glance round slightly, as if suspecting that she had an admirer in tow. Yet for the life of me, my dear, I could not think how to approach her. There is, you understand, a considerable gulf between our social ranks. How hard it is for one of my rank to be accepted by a girl in her situation. She had crossed by the park lane and was walking along by the shops, when inspiration came to me. I felt in my pocket and found a gold sovereign. Holding this firmly in my hand, I strode forward, determined to overtake her. Almost gasping with apprehension, I drew level and flourished the coin. “I beg your pardon,” I said, hearing the tremor in my own voice, “I believe you have dropped this!” Was I not cunning, dear cousin? Had I not found the ideal pretext? It might cost me a pound and yet I had purchased a rare opportunity. Julie stopped and turned to me. Yes there is sulkiness in that mouth and chin, a certain hardness in the hazel eyes and the wide cheekbones. The young face may be a little pale and wan, the nose somewhat crude. But she is adorable. “Oh, yes,” she said, taking the coin and allowing me to feel her warm hand, “I think I must have done.” Her voice! Dearest Maude, I have heard her voice for the first time. To be sure it is a little flat and common. Its tone suggests that Julie may whine with displeasure when the mood takes her. Yet I love her for what she is, Maudie, and not for what a pattern-maker would require. She slipped the coin into her pocket and turned to flounce on her way. “I hope,” said I, “that we may be better acquainted in a while. You were at the recital the other evening, I believe, and I should value your opinion as to the performance.” “As to that,” she said, “I have no opinion. I went only as a companion.” “In that case,” I murmured, “it would give me the greatest pleasure to escort you there on some other occasion.”

She did not, I confess, seize upon the invitation at once.

“We'll see,” said Julie with an impatient toss of her fine blond mane, “Perhaps you may escort me. For the moment, though, you'd best leave off following me as you have been doing the past half-hour. Even if I shouldn't mind it and shouldn't call a policeman, my friend-my boyfriend that is-won't stand for it. A hefty fellow, he is.”

With that, the little minx went on her way. Discouraged? You think me discouraged, Maude? Never, I promise you! I have spoken to my idol, the object of my adoration. I will not be denied. I cannot be denied, having come so far. I know who she is and where she may be found. I have touched her hand and heard her voice. I have seen the shape of her pretty bottom-cheeks and the line of the scandalous little panties which she wears. I shall triumph, Maude. Believe me, I shall triumph. If I should be denied now-if I do not triumph-I have no idea how I can endure it. To tell you the truth, my thoughts about Julie since seeing her close and hearing her voice have become a little unworthy of the great Petrarchian love to which I aspired a few nights ago. I think more and more of Julie with her knickers down.

Julie with her slim and childishly fragile thighs spread wide. Julie with her mouth rounded upon my stiffness. Julie arse-upwards, cheekily inviting my attentions over the sofa cushions. Julie shuddering and whimpering as the pulse of passion is released deep in her belly.

I daresay all those men who view her behind the counter or at her chores have similar thoughts to mine. Yet none feels the effect of them as deeply as I. Oh yes, I am in love, dear Maude. My case is worse than it was to begin with. Quite incurable. Your own devoted Augustus Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude V. Lady Maude to Augustus Lago di Garda, 11 June Augustus, dear!

How could you? How can you be so lacking in self-respect, in prudence, in loyalty to your family and your class? Do you forget who you are that you demean yourself before such a base creature as this Julie? Once and for all, my cousin, she is a tart, a common shopgirl, almost a whore I suspect. If not for your own sake, then for ours, think of what you are doing! She is not worth a single outpouring of seed from such a man as yourself. And I must say, Gussie, that were I more closely your kin than I am, my concern would be to bring proceedings before the Commissioners in Lunacy to have you protected from your own follies. Next you will be telling us that you wish to marry the little slut! A fine thing indeed to find such a face at the far end of-the dining-table or upon the pillow beside you in your own bedroom. I really think, my love, that Dr. Raspail has proved a disaster in the matter of your neurasthenia. Will you not reconsider, Augustus my dear? Will you not, after all, leave England and come to us here in Italy for the season? The light and air would do you good.

The Italian way of dealing with such problems of the heart as yours would at once put many matters into perspective for you. If you will not consent to that, then, I beg you, let my own friends make arrangements for your entertainment at home. I do not expect you to live like an anchorite. Of course you must have young women to occupy your attention. Indeed, your present malaise gives you an appetite for the strong meat of shopgirls and trollops. So be it. They shall be provided until you have had your fill of them and are prepared to return to the rarer and finer delicacies offered by young girls of our own class. You are at present in a dangerous state, mon ami, where you really may ask the whining and sullen Julie to be your wife. And if you do not attempt that, I fear you may be guilty of some act which may cause her to scream for a policeman. Oh, have no fear. There will be no legal action. The police do not come quite as cheap as they once did. On the other hand, there are few of them who would not be content to ignore Julie's protests and walk away with your sovereigns chinking in their pockets. Yet the scandal may spread just the same.

What is it you want, Gussie? Only ask and it shall be provided.

Do you yearn for a coltish young blonde with the features of her pale oval face as hard and crude as Julie's? Must she have sturdy hips, shortish thighs, and full bottom-cheeks? Why, you shall have that creature in your bed this very week! Do you prefer a strapping young wench with lank dark hair and fringe, firm pale features, straight back, trim thighs, bottom cheeks sturdy and broadened? Only say what you would have! Would you like a pair of sisters on the threshold of their teens-daughters of good middle-class family? Then you may have brown-eyed and brown-haired Joanne of the rather weighty hips and seat, partnered by her cadette, Claire, of the trim little figure, cropped hair, and gymnastic ability. If it is none of these, only whisper your secret longings and they shall be provided for. Do you secretly long to see Joanne and Claire head-to-tail on your bed in their passion? Would you embed your manly stiffness deep between the puppy-fat cheeks of Joanne's bottom? You have only to ask, dear Gus, and you shall enjoy thrills enough to make you forget the very existence of the wretched little tart, Julie.

Best of all, you should come to us in Italy. I promise you there is entertainment enough! Since I last wrote, matters have developed most amusingly here. Not only do we have Carissima Jones at our disposal but the nymph Marit, a Scandinavian student of fifteen who has been put under Mr. Bowler's tutelage for a month or two while she learns the language and customs of Italy. I assure you, dear cousin, that Marit will offer you all the charms of Julie with the added thrill of a young girl whose body and mind have not yet reached the full growth of womanhood, so that you may train her in the way you would have her develop. You do not believe me? Very well. Imagine yourself in this resort, somewhere near the pink paving of the promenade and the palm trees stirring in the breeze. The youth of the town and the young students gather there in noisy groups. Among them you would find Marit and some other girl who takes language lessons at the summer academy. One sight of Marit would make you forget the little tart by whom you have been ensnared! To be sure you shall have her dressed in the same blouse and tight denim of your idol. What would you see? A pretty little creature, charmingly indifferent to the authority of her elders and betters, Marit has those firm and pert little features which match the lightly sun-browned silkiness of her fair skin. The tilt of her nose and the tight little chin are as charming as her blue eyes and the light brown waves of lustrous hair which are worn loose and trimmed just where they lie upon her shoulders. You might see her in some cheeky little summer cap, sitting at a cafe table with the others, smoking a forbidden cigarette, and you would long only for her. Mark's figure is just of the sort you prefer. Indeed she likes to show it in the tightest jeans-denim of beachwear. Her legs and thighs are still narrow and straight, quite as slender as those which you admire through the bookshop window! Her hips are lean as those of any fourth-form schoolgirl and Marit's bottom-cheeks are still slim and tightly rounded. You have only to join us here, dear Gussie, and this nymph of Norway shall be yours with all her adolescent promise. You hesitate! Perhaps Marit at fifteen is not ready for such things as you envisage? You would be quite wrong in that, my dear, and I will prove you so with the evidence of my own eyes. Marit has the certain knowing hardness about her which betrays her knowledge of men, though I do not think she has experienced much even with boys of her own age. You would alter that for her, would you not? How do I know all this? Last night there occurred the most amusing incident of all. The Signore with his bold eyes and waxed moustache paid us a call after dinner to share coffee and liqueurs and to inquire most charmingly after our well-being during Mr. Bowler's short absence in Venice. At a late hour, he took his leave and was shown from the room by Miss Jones. Mark had long since been despatched to her room so that we might talk of things freely in her absence. The Signore is most intrigued by the Scandinavian surname Aas, which he feels sure must be derived from a vulgarity of some sort! Ten minutes after he had left my company, I went upstairs to my own room and was soon aware of a murmuring which came from beyond the wall. Our randy young Miss Jones was not alone in her bedroom! You may be sure that I lost no time in drawing up a chair and applying my eye to the spy-hole in the wall. One does not hear very much, for the walls are conveniently thick and I do not suppose that Miss Jones or the Signore who was with her now thought that anything of their activities could be overheard. To my astonishment, Miss Jones was dressed as if for her work the other afternoon, in tight pants and blouse. Indeed she was now performing the very chores which had attracted the attention of several gentlemen to the shop window. The Signore sat in a chair behind her, one hand playing with his waxed moustache while he watched her. He was for all the world like the young man whose trouser front had bulged with such a load while he watched Miss Jones at work on all fours!

With the small round brush she was now stirring up the pile of the bedroom carpet, the crop of her brushed curls lowered and her almond eyes flashing their occasional challenge at the man who sat behind her. As she worked her way back towards him, Miss Jones's slim and upward branching thighs offered a lewd and enticing prospect to her master. Her rear cheeks so round and trim, so suggestively separated, swelled and writhed. The route between the rear of her legs lay tantalisingly open. By hollowing her waist downwards, the randy little piece was trying to offer herself still more brazenly for his attention. As soon as she was close to his chair, the Signore put his hand down and began to fondle the cheeks of Miss Jones's backside in the tight denim. She stopped at once, waiting on hands and knees with her head still bowed a little, as if to discover what his pleasure might be. It will not surprise you to learn that the Signore began to undo her at the waist and to work the denim, with Miss Jones's panties inside, well down over her taut young hips and trim thighs. A moment more and her pants were round her knees as she knelt at his disposal. The great man slipped his fingers between her warm gold thighs from the rear. With gentle stroking and squeezing he roused her, for all the world as if he were milking some compliant female creature in his stable! If Miss Jones felt the indignity of such a situation, she showed no sign of this. She braced herself on hands and knees, her head lowered as if she were trying to look back between her legs at what he was doing to her. Her slim Levantine thighs writhed together in the most exquisite of Cupid's torments and the cheeks of her backside seemed to tense and relax in a furtive tell-tale rhythm. From time to time the Signore drew his hand away, causing her a gasp of deprivation, and administered a ringing smack on the coppery smoothness of Miss Jones's bottom, that forced a squeal of alarm from her. Then she moaned and quivered gratefully as the hand resumed its former labours between her thighs. You may be sure that he was not going to bring her to a conclusion so easily, Augustus. Any man who had possession of this lascivious little piece would want to make it a long session with her. He was merely working her up to a point at which she would never regain her equanimity without first having a climax. He told her to remain on all fours and I guessed at once that there was to be some kind of bedroom sport.

Getting up from his chair, the Signore went over to the table and took a fine mauve candle from its silver-gilt holder. In a moment more, he stooped over the girl as she knelt on hands and knees. To be sure, she was more than ready for something of the kind. With a little careful insertion of the candle-base between the rear of her legs, he found a most convenient holder for it-a holder which received the round mauve wax with grateful tremors and sudden gasps of pent-up excitement! The ornamental wick protruded back between the rear of the slim gold thighs in a most provoking manner. Somewhat to my alarm, the Signore struck a match and applied it to the wick. It burnt with a small and perfect flame. I hoped he did not intend it to burn down until it scorched randy young Miss Jones ou vous savez, as the saying is! You may be sure, though, he is too much of a gentleman for that.

The proletarian zeal whose torches found their way between the thighs of certain aristocratic beauties in '92 is foreign to him. Who can tell what preliminaries a pair of lovers may adopt to excite them to greater prodigies in their coupling? Miss Jones waited on all fours while the Signore with his moustache finely waxed and his eyes staring, went down on all fours behind her. A spot of hot wax fell on her bare thigh and she gave a sudden start, for which he chided her.

The rules of the game must be observed. Presently he clapped his hands sharply to make the sound of a starting-pistol. In his own bedroom, this cavaliere would have fired off a pistol in earnest but he was more prudent as a guest at the Villa Lola. When the signal was given, Miss Jones scampered forward on hands and knees, the little flame of the candle fluttering like a flag. Grinning madly, the Signore set off in pursuit. He did not, it is true, use his utmost energy for he wished to prolong the fun a little. The object of the sport was to blow out, snuff out, or snap out the life of the little flame whose candle was sunk so firmly in the girl's love-nest. At first he tried to blow in sharp gusts of breath but the randy young minx merely twisted her arse this way and that to frustrate him.

Foiled in this, the Signore took from his pocket a pair of snuffers and tried to smother the flame by pinching it out. He was not successful, though he once pinched the flesh high up on the rear of the girl's thigh, which caused an amazing shriek. The Signore told her, somewhat ungratefully, to shut her noise. As the sublime artist scampered after his beauty, lured on by squirming thighs and writhing hips, there was nearly a catastrophe to put paid to the Villa Lola and all its occupants. Our randy young odalisque was greatly excited by the sport and by the promise of what was going to be done to her at its conclusion. This, combined with the agreeable presence of the candle base in her pussy had made her lubricate copiously. Her energetic movements made her feel the candle more exquisitely than ever and her natural feminine slipperiness had spread even down the inner surfaces of her trim thighs. I swear it was this state of her excitement which now caused the candle to shoot backwards from between young Miss Jones's legs as she scampered forwards. Like a splendid jeu d'artifice it sped out from beneath her thighs and described a surprising arc across the bedroom, the Same still fluttering at the wick. It fell quite six feet away and was at once in danger of setting on fire the silk cover of the bed. The Signore, galantuomo that he is, ignored this mere threat to life when there were more important matters to be decided. It was Miss Jones with a charming little scream who sprang across to the bed and began to beat out the infant flames with the back of a hairbrush. At no point had it been agreed that the rules of the game were suspended. The Signore snatched a silk cord from the curtain and, as the object of his lust knelt over the scene of the little conflagration, he ran the cord round her wrists and tied her by it to the bedpost. There she knelt, or rather knelt over, the edge of the bed, her hands tied and able only to look round at him with a sudden fright in the slant of her enigmatic almond eyes. How busy he was with her now! He knelt down behind the lewd young shopgirl, just like a dog who sniffs a bitch. He kissed the coppery smoothness of her bottom-cheeks, her trim young thighs, and even between her legs, much to the cost of his immaculately waxed whiskers. He gave her a hearty smack on the bottom and then another. This excited him so much that he continued until Miss Jones wailed plaintively to know if she was to be spanked or ravished. “A little spanking, Car',” he murmured, “A smack or two to make you lively! Do you want to go home, Car? Have you had enough, Carissima Jones?” With that he unbuttoned and mounted her. I do not suppose such lust can ever be a matter for true elegance, nor was it in this present case. He rode her in and out for several minutes, then withdrew, smacked her bottom a little, and rode her again.

“Untie my hands, then,” she murmured in her charming Celtic lilt.

The Signore merely chortled at the suggestion and gave another sharp smack on her coppery-toned bottom-cheeks as if to reprimand such sauciness. Miss Jones gave a little squeal, whether of discomfort or excitement, who can say? Perhaps it was a little of both.

Whatever the cause, it goaded the Signore to mount her with the resolve of a born rider astride the saddle. Taking her between the rear of her thighs, he was thus able to give his hands full freedom of fondling her breasts and belly, while his hairy loins tickled and prickled her young backside. There is, alas, no scale of enthusiasm in these matters by whose Fahrenheit or Centigrade one may measure the thrill of desire. Yet our almond-eyed beauty writhed and whimpered in a manner which made such exact measurement unnecessary.

The Signore feasted his lips on the delicate whorls of her ears and the fine moulding of her neck. He bit her lightly on the shoulders and his fingernails raked the smooth gold flanks of her trim thighs. She, in turn, twisted her face round and the tight-lidded slant of her dark eyes begged kisses for her greedy lips. A series of sharp rising cries announced the approach of her climax while the Signore discharged his own passion into her loins with grunts and gasps far removed from the exquisite colour of his famous verses. They lay entwined on the dark blue-and-crimson of the Persian carpet, writhing and panting together a little in the moment of their supreme satisfaction. Presently there was another sharp smack on her bottom to prepare the randy little piece for an encore. Just then I heard a sound in the corridor. Opening my door as softly as I might, I peeped through the crack and took young Marit entirely by surprise. What do you suppose? She had stripped to her white blouse and her denim drawers-which was not unusual at that hour of night. She was also kneeling at Miss Jones's keyhole, which was charmingly lewd! You may guess the sequel. Her features were hidden somewhat by the light brown tresses which lapped about her collar. Yet as she sat upon her heels and viewed the scene in the bedroom, Marit's slim young hand was thrust within the waist of her pants at the front. Her fingers were moving with a most lascivious knowingness between her slender thighs.

Though I could not quite see her face for the silken waves of hair falling about her features, I was certain of her mood all the same, if only from the manner in which her glossy young hair trembled and the gasps which issued from her! Do not condemn her too easily, Augustus. Desire is strong at fourteen or fifteen and yet the proper conduct of society requires that its yearnings must be repressed by its elders. How else, then, is Marit to relieve her feelings? I know that she spends much of the day at cafe tables with girls and boys of her own age. Yet I cannot believe that she has ever so much as had her hand inside a boy's pants to feel his budding manhood. Nor, I think, has a boy ever had his own hand in her knickers to fondle the warmth between her thighs or the cool little orbs of Marit's bottom-cheeks. So the little minx worked herself harder and harder, until at last the spasm came upon her. She shuddered as if with horror and yet surely the pleasure was exquisite. Indeed, she was so overcome that she sank down and lay upon the tiles, hugging her knees to her breasts and her fingers busy in her panties all over again! What momentous events are passing in the Villa Lola, dear cousin! What stories I may have to tell you by the time that I despatch my next letter to England! Your own loving Maude Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude VI. Augustus to Lady Maude Wight, 14 June, afternoon My dearest Maude, I received your letter with its charming and most amusing anecdote of Miss Jones. Yet I fear, my dear cousin, that I am hardly a good audience for such tales just now. To tell you the truth, I do not know whether to rejoice or despair. I have devoted my time to finding out all that I can about Julie, where she lives and what time she may be seen in the street or at her work in the bookshop. To what purpose is all this? I have discovered that she has a lover with whom she shares her rooms. I had feared this and was quite sure that it must be a hulking fellow in whose company I had seen her from time to time. I was wrong. She has a lover but, believe me, it is another girl! You see my predicament? I do not know whether that makes my situation better or worse. Is a woman a more dangerous rival for me than a man? I cannot tell and do not know how to begin finding out.

The girl, like so many common sluts here, is one of Mr. Bowler's young whores. You may see her and a number of others busying themselves as you pass the doors of one of his shops. This creature is named Sian and I daresay you know her. She has a mop of lightly waved reddish hair and a white-skinned look. Her eyes are a light blue, her cheekbones slanting and her chin rather weak with a painted little bud of a mouth. She is not particularly tall and her look is of a slack and sluttish girl. I am no purist in such matters, however. Were it not for my rivalry with the girl-my aversion, needless to say-I would allow that Sian has that characteristic Celtic beauty of pale skin, reddish hair which always seems to make skin even whiter, and blue eyes which sometimes look dark from the manner in which she applies the mascara brush to their lashes. Her figure at twenty years old is at that desirable stage of rounding softly but without showing the degree of plumpness which will one day mar her outline. Under a snug singlet one sees the resilience of her cherry-topped breasts.

When Sian bends over in her cotton working-pants of pale grey-blue, she tightens them skin-smooth over thighs that are still trim and bottom cheeks which are still tautly rounded with the elasticity of youth. I had watched her in this posture a day or two before, the cotton so tight at the seat that one easily saw the ridge which mapped the outline of Sian's knickers. Do not think I am blind, then, to her attractions. Yet there is no torture I would shrink from imposing as a punishment for her seduction of Julie's innocence. I swear I have seen Sian wearing a wedding-ring. If she has regular exercise on the staff of a husband or boyfriend, what excuse is there for her depravity with another girl? It is not the helpless inclination of a born lesbian but a matter of calculated lechery. What right has she to enjoy the pleasures of Julie's bed when my own passion burns unrequited? I will not give up the pursuit of my beloved-rest assured of that. I have rented a common lodging across the street from her own, the better to lay siege. Its upper window commands a view into all her rooms, so that I may survey the object of my desires as well as the machinations of my rival. Before you cry alarm at my obsession and write to Dr. Raspail about my condition, let me inform you that all my suspicions have proved well founded, as I saw for myself last night. Would you credit it? Thinking this room of mine unoccupied, the two girls did not so much as draw a curtain over any window. I saw all that passed as clearly as if then in the best box at the theatre and they performing on the stage a dozen feet from me!

But first you may be sure I had not missed the opportunity of taking many a view of Julie during the day, while she sat on her stool behind the shop counter in her plain black dress and coquettish little red shoes. I watched her as, having changed into the working pants of tight denim, she lifted the books and filled the shelves again. At a discreet distance, I followed her through the streets on her route to the rooms where Sian waited. How I adored the spread of her fine golden-blond hair on her shoulders as it rose and fell a little with the rhythm of her agile steps! How my eyes caressed her slender thighs in the skin-tightness of smooth faded denim which creased across their backs and behind her knees at each movement. Though she is, I hear, nineteen years old, Julie's thighs have the endearingly fragile look of a little girl's. My desires grew harder as I watched in the tight denim seat the lewd little movements, while she walked, of the saucy little cheeks of Julie's bottom! When we came to the narrow street, I hurried up to my window and sat there discreetly behind the curtain. Every room opposite was open to my view-bedroom and kitchen, even toilet and bathroom-so little did they imagine themselves to be observed and so little, perhaps, did they care. Sian was watching for her girlfriend's arrival. I saw the image of her face and the short tresses of red hair shaped about her head and lying here and there on her forehead. In anticipation of the passion and seduction to come, she had darkened the lashes of her blue eyes with the mascara brush and painted red the sensuous little bud of her lips. With her pert young nose and the slight weakness of her chin, she appears the most blatant sensualist. They met at the door of the sitting-room and at once slid their arms about each other in a writhing and smoothing embrace. Each of them seemed to be trying to stifle the other with the pressure of mouth upon mouth. Sian, the tendrils of dark red hair lying over her brow, was quite shamelessly unbuttoning Julie's blouse with all the moist eagerness of frustrated passion. In a moment more her hands had firmed up those pert little breasts which I vow ought only to be accessible to my own adoring hands. I was so vexed, Maude! So very vexed that I cannot describe my state of mind with any lucidity. It pains me even to recall my feelings then.

They led one another off, with arms twined lewdly round waists and heads resting together, pausing to kiss and nuzzle at every few steps. The door from the bathroom to the toilet opened and Julie went in, undoing her pants in preparation. At least, I thought, the door would be shut and she would be separated from Sian for a few minutes.

Perhaps I would contrive some scheme for getting the slut with the mop of red hair into my power by then. I was so enraged, my dearest, that I trembled afterwards at the images which had occurred to me. Yet I cannot say I regretted what I would have done to Sian if fate had delivered her to me in some harem from which no scandal ever emerges.

How I hated her painted little mouth and her round chin, the slant of her cheekbones and the way she mascara'd the lashes of her wide blue eyes. I raged at the mop of red hair trimmed short where it just lapped over her collar, its stray plumes falling on her brow. I would have handed the leather strangling-strap to my major-domo and ordered him to do his worst to Sian. Vain dreams, indeed, and yet most agreeable to me in my jealous fury-and surely justified by what I saw.

The door of the toilet did not close. Sian and Julie both entered.

Julie sat on the pedestal with her knickers round her ankles and released her flood on the porcelain. All the time, Sian hung over her and browsed with lips on lips. Julie sat a little longer while her friend busied round her. Then I saw that my treasure was winding her golden blond hair into a strand, holding it forward from the crown.

With Sian's aid she once more pinned it into that delightful little top-knot which gives her the look of such a saucy little madam of a child! Even before Julie rose from the pedestal, Sian knelt before her and removed the panties and denim which were round her ankles. To my fury she seemed to be telling Julie, in a sly and sluttish manner, that she would need to wear nothing of that kind again this evening and that indeed she might not be permitted to. I wonder, Maude. Do you suppose it could be contrived for the sharp bodkin point to enter Sian's belly button at such a snail's pace that she might live a whole day and night upon it? I cannot wish for less that that! I watched them return kisses again. Now it was Sian who undid her pants and sat upon the pedestal. I tell you, Maude, I nearly swooned with horror when I saw how she had led my girl astray.

For now it was Julie who hovered over Sian, lips to lips, while the redhead pressed the pale softness of her hips and bottom on the seat and then let loose such a flood upon the porcelain. Is the world mad? Has decency deserted the entire female sex? Like a pair of dirty little schoolgirls, Sian and Julie fondled and played in this inauspicious bridal suite. That was but the start. Sian stood up and removed her own pants from the tangle round her ankles. Naked from the waist down, arms about one another, they slunk from there into the bedroom. You may well believe that the boudoir of such a pair was a place of extreme disorder and that the cover of the bed itself was littered with the brushes and patch-boxes, the rouge and mascara, by which beauty is applied to certain female features. Among this debris, down they lay. Each pulled the other's blouse up to bring their breasts into play, nipples teasing nipples into hardness while I watched them. Then it seemed that Sian coaxed Julie to mount astride her thigh by cocking a leg over and to have a ride. My view was of Julie's saucy little bottom-cheeks and the rear of her thighs as she did this. How she squirmed! How her seductive little bum-cheeks clenched and writhed, her thighs squeezing upon Sian's in order to excite the sensitive folds of her vaginal flesh. I saw that Julie's passion rose easily and this made me lament all the more that she was not spending it upon me. Her hands were clenched into fists and she ground her teeth with frenzy. She clenched her thighs upon Sian's with such vicious energy that you might have thought she was trying to crush to death her ticklish little clitoris. What was I to do? Alas, I was doomed to be merely the spectator of a pleasure enjoyed at my expense. Julie had been easily seduced. She now turned about so that she knelt astride Sian's face, indeed almost squatted on Sian's lips, while she bowed her own face so that she could employ it between the other girl's open legs. In this manner they made love for the next half hour. First it was with fingers, diddling one another quickly up and down the pleasure slit, working a finger in and then quickly in-and-out. Next it was kissing and tongue-flicking of the other girl's love-button. During this, Sian moaned with happiness all the time and twice screamed out at the intensity of her arousal. Presently to my horror, I saw Julie move a little and kiss Sian upon the cheeks of her bottom. What was to be the end of this? I had not expected to see Julie climax first for though she may appear a sullen little thing, her moodiness did not seem to be of that kind which sometimes cloaks the sensual nature of a woman. And yet it was Julie who orgasmed first. She jigged her hips and her thighs-so slim and fragile- shuddered with the overmastering thrill of the release. She cried out the names of Sian, of her loutish boyfriend, and of several other partners with whom she has enjoyed a rub and a squeeze in the past. Sian, unable to wait longer for her own release, slipped a hand down and completed her own pleasure without any assistance from Julie. With her eyes closed and the tendrils of her red hair lying over her forehead, she began to gasp and tense herself until this randy trim-thighed little shopgirl came off with shudders and murmurs of passionate gratitude to her own fingers. Those who tell you, Maude, that jealousy is like the torture of the rack do not at all exaggerate. The cruelty of it is in the way it pulls a man in opposite directions so that he is no longer master of his feelings. At one moment I saw Julie in the arms of another and could have wept for the loss I felt. Then, with no effort on my part, I felt only a savage anger towards the girl for whom I longed. It was as if, since I could not have her, I wished to see her tortured and abused. Then this feeling too would pass and I was once again desolate in the hopeless state of my exile from her joys.

There are libertines who will tell you that a lover gets a secret pleasure in watching his wife or his mistress in the arms of another woman. If it were a man, he would fly into a rage, reaching either for his pistol or for a writ of criminal conversation. Yet to see a woman maul and masturbate her is a mere jest to him, according to such stories. A woman is no threat to his supremacy over his beloved.

Indeed she shall be made to submit to him as well in a manner which requires no pistols or lawyers' writs. Do not believe it, my dear cousin. These are the jibes of worn-out old roues with no power left to please any woman. To see Sian and Julie toiling at one another was the keenest punishment of desire which I could ever have imagined.

They lay head to tail on the bed, closely inspecting and fondling the spread of each other's thighs and buttocks. The most intense spasms of their mutual desire seemed to be past. Now they were content to stroke and fondle more gently. Despite the wedding-ring on her finger, Sian has trim young thighs and firmly agile bottom-cheeks.

Julie licked her fingers and began to draw wet patterns on the white skin of Sian's trim young buttocks and down her thighs. Now the redhead returned the service to the slim young blonde. They wetted and drooled over each other in the lewdest possible manner until their unwholesome conduct excited stronger passions and they began to pry and insert their fingers, each watching what she was doing to the other at a few inches distance in order to inflame her own lewdness.

I cannot envisage what means may be used to drive these two girls apart and to speed Julie into my arms. I do assure you, Maude, they now began to play upon the bed like the most lascivious little kittens. There was not one nook or cranny of either girl's body which was not lingeringly probed and caressed by the tongue of the other little slut! You see where despair born of jealousy had brought me? I now began to think of Julie as a slut! I will leave you to imagine what I wished for Sian when I knew how deeply she had undermined the purity of my passion! Were it in my power, I would order a display behind the plate glass of the shop which should have the crowds a-gape! Sian with her mop of red hair, her white-skinned lasciviousness and blue eyes, a rope round her neck and her feet dancing on air a full hour! A steel bodkin-tip tickling her bare belly-button and beginning to demand entrance! Have no fear, Maude. It is not yet within my power- but it shall one day be! I shall not be called to account for it. Our friend, the Lord Chief Justice, will be my security! Dr. Raspail shall plead my neurasthenia. Have I not been provoked beyond the endurance of a man in perfect health, let alone one in my questionable condition? Despair overcame my curiosity and I turned from the window. Presently I knew that it would be impressible for me to endure another moment in the rooms I had hired to keep my observation upon the pair. Taking up my hat, I went down the stairs and shut the door. Above the little street, I now saw the light shining from the uncurtained window of the room in which the two girls lay, naked and writhing in each other's arms. Upon my arrival home, I threw myself down in a chair and brooded upon my tragedy. Why it was, I cannot say, yet I thought suddenly of those reformatory institutions where young women and girls are taught discipline by methods familiar to us all. I had once browsed through some pages of the House of Correction memoirs and was tolerably well-informed as to the scenes enacted in such places. In my mind I saw a girl of twenty with a firm and round young figure. She was pale-skinned and her mop of red hair fell this way and that. It was Sian. She was hoisted astride the padded vaulting-horse and stretched forward so that she lay along it while she straddled. They strapped her down and made her secure. A brute of a fellow, the very one for such a task, took up the cord whip. He lashed the bare cheeks of Sian's bottom until they were a mass of weals and the blood ran down to the backs of her knees. Thus I imagined, and thus I wished the future should be for our lewd young redhead. And then, Maude, a curious thing happened. Without exercising the least direction over my imagination, I found that the girl whom I pictured over the flogging-horse, screaming and writhing under the whip, was not Sian any longer. It was Julie whom my subconscious mind now presented on the stage of my imagination. The significance of this is more than I dare ponder. I know it is not a subject to be raised with the good Dr.

Raspail. What am I to deduce from it? I thought only a little longer and saw that, of course, I should lose my reason unless I took measures in good time. I have neither the means nor the leisure to have a shopgirl like Sian thrown into a reformatory for three or four years. I must act at once, or at the first propitious moment. I know there are rough fellows of a kind who may be bribed to assist one in these affairs. Two might hold her while I tightened the cord. Surely Julie would not refuse me after that? I paced up and down laying my plan. Then, past two in the morning, I could endure the uncertainty no more, for I was distracted at the thought of what Sian might be doing to Julie. I went back at dead of night to my hired room. Until daybreak I stared from the window into the brightly lit bedroom opposite. The two girls were sleeping, naked and head to tail.

Presently they stirred and it was now Julie who first began to open the redhead's thighs with her fingers and to part Sian's bottom-cheeks. I will not tolerate it, Maude. I will be denied no longer. At the first opportunity I shall be avenged upon the young whore Sian! Augustus Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude VII. Lady Maude to Mr. Bowler Garda, 17 June, p.m. Hotel Rialto, Venezia, per corriere espresso My dear Friend, I send this brief message by the most expeditious route and beg your assistance or advice. Matters concerning my cousin, Lord A, with which I lately acquainted you, have now assumed a much graver complexion. There is a girl by the name of Sian, employed in a menial capacity by one of your enterprises. Lord A believes she is a rival for the blond slut in whom he has so unwisely interested himself. With his nerves in their tender state, he vows to kill the other creature-the redhead Sian-by dramatic methods. Sensible people do not care, of course, if it pleases a nobleman to put to death a young bitch of her sort. But Lord A's neurasthenia has made his actions unpredictable. I do not think he would do the thing at all discreetly. In feet, I am almost sure he would make a public example of her. The police have always obliged in other matters but I do not think family influence and money could quieten the scandal if Lord A were to pinion Sian and hang her with a rope round her neck and keep her dancing on air half an hour. Too many gentlemen would want to “spectate” to hush it up. Now, my dear friend-I beg you-do think what may be done. The affair between the girls is certainly sapphic on the part of the wretched little Julie as well. You know how such girls may be quietly removed to other places- done away with, in the sense of being spirited away to some establishment where they will remain permanently. Can you not help us now? I will promise you a certain reward, in the gift of my father, that you have long coveted. There is a contract to be put out in the matter of equipping two mounted regiments who are ordered for viceregal duty in Calcutta. No man could furnish their horses so well as yourself. I am sure you take my meaning. I send this message by express, in the hands of a fellow whom I have trusted before.

However, as one cannot be too careful in a matter of such delicacy, I have avoided “naming names”-even your own. And I sign myself only as your loyal and trusting friend. M.

Anonymous

Augustus and Lady Maude

VIII. Mr. Bowler to R. L. Esq.

Hotel Rialto, Venice Tuesday a.m., 18 June In strictest confidence The enclosed letter is from a lady of the first rank who stands high in my personal esteem. You will see at once, from the past services you have rendered me, the extent of the difficulty. I believe you will understand the nature of the means required to overcome it. I have marked on the enclosed street-map of the city the house where the two delinquents are to be found. In the light of certain favours you have enjoyed from me in the past-and which shall be repeated in the future-I call upon your assistance.

You will need two of my stable-grooms, men who are not easily unnerved by squeals and imprecations. I suggest Withers and Platt.

They will, however, want a gentleman of your standing to manage the affair. I suggest you let them have fun with both girls for an hour or two before the abduction. They cannot then tell tales without implicating themselves. Once the “packages” are securely “wrapped,” you may take them a mile or so and deliver them to my agent Jasper B- – in the London Road for shipment overseas. He will know what to do and will arrange their transportation. When you next visit the Bond Street branch of the City and Counties Bank, you will find 200 guineas has been placed to your account. You may also depend upon a certain subcontract in respect of leather for stable-whips.

Withers has already assisted in the removal of Janet Bond, who threatened scandal after a few liberties with her person. I will write no more here, except to say that the first 200 guineas will be matched by the same sum again, from the family of the young gentleman, so soon as the two impediments have been removed. You see what will be done for you by those who hold your abilities in such esteem!

H.B.

IX. Lady Maude to Augustus

Lago di Garda, 19 June My dear Augustus, I need not tell you with what care and concern I read your last letter. I scanned it through while lying upon the chaise-longue after breakfast, the coffee and oranges scarcely consumed. The events you described in those pages put me quite in a passion. I broke all the sticks of my fan, with which one wafts the cooler air from the open window. What am I to say, my beloved?

You have grown to such an age and learnt so little-unless it be to endure a crise des nerfs at every setback. I beg that you will listen to me while there is still time. Neurasthenia is not the worst that may afflict a young gentleman of tender sensibilities in such a position as your own. Far worse is the storm of social scandal and ruin whose dark clouds I already see gathering about your head.

You cannot-you must not-go on with these romantic absurdities involving common shopgirls and vulgar young trollops with whom you can have nothing in kind. You saw Julie and Sian having sex together in the lewdest manner. What else did you imagine of such hussies? Did you imagine that they would spend a quiet evening reading aloud the verses of Lord Tennyson or Mr. Longfellow to one another? Did you suppose they would crochet or embroider with eyes meekly cast down upon the hoops with which they worked? I trust you have learnt better, Augustus. We have waited quite five years to see you become decently attached to a young lady of your own class and condition. We have thus far waited in vain. The disorder of your venereal passions is, it appears to me, nothing short of pathological. I should imagine that there must be a term in medicine to describe your obsession with these common sluts. And if there is not such a term-then there ought to be.

An Augustinian malaise. Now let me advise you, as a woman and as one of your own rank in society. You may enjoy such sluts as Julie, of course you may. That is every gentleman's privilege. But not as you might do. You must do it without this desperate infatuation and, if possible, invoke an air of moral probity. The art of social morality in England is simplicity itself. You may do whatever you choose to the girls and young women of the lower orders, provided you talk all the time about decency and respectability. If you wished only to enjoy a ride between Julie's legs, to fondle those saucy little bottom-curves of hers-above all to whip them soundly-you might do so with impunity. I will go further. You may do so to your heart's content and earn nothing but praise and reward from the justices and the clergy, even from your own wife and family. What is true morality, Gussie? It is certainly not the feeble mooning over sights seen through bedroom windows, nor this wish to exalt a randy little slut like Julie as the future Lady of Coombe. Nothing but scandal and disgrace attends such indiscretions. True morality is the removal of such a lewd little minx from her present corruption of such gentlemen as yourself to a penitentiary institution where she may serve three or four years under discipline. Ah, I hear you wail like a little boy that your toy would be taken from you by such methods! What a silly thing you are! Girls like Julie, in such reformatories, are always at the disposal of a gentleman of your rank who wishes to play the moralist with them. Present yourself at the gate and the gaoler will doff his cap to bow you through. I do not say that you ought not to chink a little silver in his hand. He is a most worthy fellow, deserving whatever recognition of a financial kind you might care to bestow upon him. Believe me, my dear, it never comes amiss to spend a few guineas wisely. By such means trade will flourish and the respectability of society may be preserved without noise or scandal.

I can assure you, upon the authority of my father and brothers who constitute a whole bench of magistrates, that there is a simple remedy when you wish to have your way with Julie or any other girl of her class. She has only to be removed to penitentiary training for three or four years and, as a magistrate yourself, you would find her constantly available to you. Examination and wholesome chastisement are the reasons given for taking down the knickers of such young wenches. You think she could never be guilty of an offence which would ensure her detention during a few years of your own pleasure?

How wrong you are! Our good friends will convict her summarily of insulting behaviour-an insolent glance from Julie would suffice!-or threatening attitudes. No sooner would I make a request than the matters might be arranged. Now, Gussie, when the law of England can arrange such affairs of the heart for you, why must you continue to play at Tristan and Isolde with a grotesque young slut of Julie's sort? You and I, my dearest, have grown up closer than brother and sister in our affections. You must know, then, that I would not deceive you for the world. Can you believe that what I tell you now is part of some plot which finds me in league with the questionable Dr.

Raspail? Even should you think so, I can prove my bona fides in a moment. Do, I beg you, have a word with our friend Lord Rupert N- -. You shall be a magistrate yourself next month if you murmur your desire to him. You may then spend every day or night of the week with a girl of Julie's kind behind the locked door of the reformatory discipline-room. I beg you will look at certain private records which Lord Rupert will show you in confidence at my request. Or else inquire of old Justice Snook and Master Miles. You will find what fun may be had with such girls as Julie in pursuit of law and decency. A certain price must be paid but most men would yearn for the chance to pay it. Having had some fun, you must exercise the bamboo cane upon the bare bottoms of fifteen-year-old reformatory tomboys like Michele Page, and Elaine, with Pauline her big sister, a plump slut of eighteen with a round face, blue eyes, and a coquettish chignon of fair hair. I assure you most would envy you the chance to have such a pair strapped on all fours over a couple of blocks, side by side.

Would you not at least try the experiment of caning them soundly across their bare bottoms with the bamboo and then giving each sister a taste of the leather dog-whip? Faced with Elaine and Pauline over the blocks, no one will inquire what you may do to them first! No complaints are listened to from such delinquents. I can assure that no other magistrate nor even the Lord Chancellor himself would regret it if you had fun with two such bare-bottomed sisters, enjoying their tightness upon your manhood. A chastiser who has been seduced by the sight of such a pair of culprits will afterwards skin their backsides closely with his whip. You see? The world would not expect you to be other than a man from the waist down. There is no prying into such trivial lapses, for which the sight of Pauline's plump bare buttocks or Elaine's tomboy bottom-cheeks must be held to blame. Even the fact that you vaselined young Elaine would be no crime. Best of all, such moral discipline with bamboo and lash is not only sanctioned by the law in such places. It is rewarded by public esteem. The stricter the method- the more severe the chastisement of Julie or Pauline- the higher will be your reputation as a pillar of social order and probity. Can you be better employed than in dealing with such girls?

Now, tell me true, my dear, does not Julie belong to this class of delinquent? Might you not ease yourself of your present torment by having her confined in such a place and made available for whatever treatment you wished her to undergo at your hands? Far from being reproached by the world-as you will be if you continue with your present infatuation-you might earn the reward of virtue and esteem.

You will perhaps think me harsh and without finer sentiments in the matter. I beg you, though, to consider this. You desire Julie, do you not? Yet you have no present hope of attaining your goal. With equal longing, you wish to be esteemed in society as befits your rank. Yet your present conduct augurs ill for this and seems doomed to end with scandal and disgrace. The state of your nerves grows daily more hectic, for your letters show it. How better to attain your desires and avoid calamity than by the methods I have described to you? If it is apprehension which holds you back from having Julie detained in this manner, let me reassure you. No one in England has ever sunk in moral reputation by using the whip under such circumstances. Our greatest schools have thrived by its employment.

There is scarcely a man or woman of merit in England who would not wish Julie to be subject to the authority of the lash and the reformatory. By following the course I recommend, you would cast off the uncertainty of youth-in the eyes of society-and establish yourself as a man of consequence. Do, my dearest cousin, take this advice to heart. Only give the word and all shall be done for you so that you may have Julie however and whenever you choose. Your loving friend, Maude Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude X. Augustus to Lady Maude Wight, 21 June, a.m. My dear Maude, How little you know me, after all, if you believe that I could consent to have the object of my affections dealt with in the manner you describe. It is not in the discipline-room of a reformatory among whips and straps that I wish to adore my bride-to-be. You tell me that Julie is not fit to be the lady of my estates. Surely it is your suggestion which would make her unfit. At present, nothing stands against my desires but her own lack of inclination. Yet how could I bring as my bride a girl who had been thrashed in a reformatory?

I have been obliged to take certain of the drops which Dr.

Raspail prescribed in order to maintain my equanimity under these trying circumstances. Your letter brought me no peace of mind. I dare not even imagine the scenes which you delineate respecting the two sisters. I daresay I should find such occasions an object of curiosity. But if you imagine that I could envisage them with Julie as the heroine, you mistake my character more than I had ever thought possible. I can write no more at present. I am so overwrought.

Your loving cousin, Augustus P.S. I have read, on your instructions, the pages which recount Elaine's ordeal. Is it possible to attend the reformatory as a spectator only? Can one obtain an introduction to the master?

XI. Lady Maude to Augustus

Lago di Garda, 25 June

My dearest Cousin, Only the postscript to your letter lightened somewhat the apprehension which I have long felt on your behalf. Lord Rupert will furnish you with all the necessary introductions you require and will esteem it a pleasure to do so. There are public disciplines attended by the justices which you might witness. Yet when the door is locked upon certain scenes, it is only the chastiser who is present with the girls. I am sure you will understand why! Your failing perhaps is one of moral resolve. Cannot you see what may be done in the name of moral discipline? We have had a charming example here in the past few days and, indeed, it is I who have helped to bring it about. Were you to join us here, you would find that I am now spoken of as the strictest duenna who ever watched over the girls of the Villa Lola.

And yet, I assure you, I have never enjoyed myself half so much in my life as I do now with Miss Jones and Marit Aas. By your outrage at the lewd little romps of Julie and Sian it is evident that you have much to learn about the amusements in which the female sex may indulge when there is no man present. I am as devoted to mankind as anyone could be, and yet I confess to a certain satisfaction which may be had in dealing with womankind. In short, I have long wanted to see young Marit's panties as her only covering, solely for the pleasure of stripping them from her. Were I a fool, which I trust is not the case, I had by now attempted a romantic seduction of our fifteen-year-old Scandinavian nymph. And what would have been the result? Outrage and scandal! The end of a pleasant summer by this warm Italian lake. What then was I to do? It was evident that I must become a moralist of the kind only found among the higher orders of English female society. Marit herself gave enough pretext for that.

She is not quite an immoraliste and yet her conduct is a little questionable. In her singlet, saucy little cap, and tight denim pants on her slender thighs and tightly rounded rear cheeks, she parades each day in the town. With her soft young face and the waves of her brown tresses lapping silkily over her collar, she is to be seen sitting at cafe tables with other girls and boys, smoking a cigarette with the studied manners of a little coquette. It is also evident that Marit plays with herself between the legs, furtively enough in the privacy of her own bed. Put all these things together and does she not call for the strictest moral supervision? I summoned her to my presence, with all Mr. Bowler's authority to support me. Marit will be a real beauty at seventeen or eighteen with her firmly rounded chin, wide and charming smile, her short pert nose and light blue eyes. How she blushed now when I spoke to her of her delinquencies, ending with the worst. “Stand up, Marit, and turn about so that I may see you. Such pretty legs for a girl of your age, in those tight denim pants! I'm sure your bridegroom will find them to be graceful and elegant when he undresses you on your honeymoon night! Narrow hips and tight young bottom-cheeks, Marit! Not quite a proper grown woman yet, perhaps! All the same, your backside begins to show a woman's shape!

Even in your wedding-dress, I'm sure those rear cheeks will still be taut and agile!” The velvety smoothness of Marit's lightly suntanned face coloured up a little at these compliments but she blushed far more deeply at my next words. “I think you like to make love to yourself, don't you, Marit? When did you last do it?”

Imagine the blushings, the stutterings of protest now! “Don't pretend to misunderstand, Marit. When did you last play with yourself?” Believe me, Gussie, I was the master inquisitor of our Nordic nymph. There was such shame-faced hesitation, a few gulps and whimpers. But I would tolerate no prevarication. To my delight Marit confessed to doing it twice the day before, once in the bathroom during the afternoon and then in bed at night! I shook my head, as if my heart were heavy with sorrow at the news. “I am more distressed, more disappointed in you, than I can say, Marit! So, if I did my duty as I should, it would be to send you home at once to your unhappy parents with a full explanation of your conduct. A girl so predisposed to these things is a moral danger to herself and to those with whom she associates. You know, I imagine, to what I refer.”

There is something so exquisite, Gussie, about true repentance.

Marit's knees pressed the carpet before my chair as she begged for anything-anything!-rather than the disgrace which now threatened her.

I was not easily moved, you may be sure. We had tears and weepings from her before I was softened a little. A fool would have gone too far. Not I. With great seriousness I explained that her moral welfare was my sole consideration. Against my better judgment, she might stay at the Villa Lola. There was, however, to be a condition.

Anything, Marit assured me. Anything! Very well, I explained. In order to maintain moral vigilance over this frail adolescent conscience, Marit was to be inspected twice a day for evidence of immoral conduct. In order to spare her blushes it would be done anonymously. There was a convenient hatchway between two rooms in the cellar. She would bend through it and the hatch would be lowered until it was locked in place, just touching the small of her back.

Marit would not be able to straighten up or free herself until the hatch was unlocked. We should be able to strip off her denim skirt or pants, pull Marit's knickers right down and fiddle with her all morning or all night if we wished to. Best of all, this was to be done in the name of the strictest moral supervision. A duenna of less imagination than I, would have fallen upon the girl at the first opportunity. I was struck by a more poetic notion. Miss Jones should carry out the examinations of Marit each morning and evening. I had no doubt that a randy and depraved young bitch of Miss Jones's sort would have an effect upon Marit. I should soon have two girls in a lewd and lascivious state rather than one. So it was that yesterday morning, Marit went slowly down the steps to the lower rooms. She hesitated long before the hatchway but then bent forward through it, the washed blue denim tight on her slender thighs and the tight little rounds of her bottom-cheeks. The hatch was lowered into place and locked. You may be sure I spied from a comer where I could see both sides, the silken waves of Marit's collar-length hair falling about her face in the most charming disorder. Miss Jones appeared cautiously, walking with the usual tight little swagger of her hips, the warm gold of her face with its almond eyes and sharp nose appearing like a Turkomean mask. She studied the slim little figure presented to her from the waist down and then very slowly undid Marit's denim. Even this caused the victim to squirm a little with apprehension. The young mistress pulled the drawers down until they were a puddle of denim round the girl's ankles. Marit's thin graceful thighs looked almost frail and yet one had not the least regret at what she was about to undergo. Marit's panties were no more than a pair of tight briefs in white cotton. For the moment she was made to wear them. Miss Jones began her inspection. Her slim nimble fingers entered between the rear of Marit's bare thighs and closed upon the little pouch of secret flesh moulded by the tight cotton gusset of her panties. How the younger nymph flinched and squirmed at the delicious forbidden touch of Miss Jones's fingers. But Miss Jones makes love to herself regularly and so has the skill of a devil when she takes other girls in hand. A demure young debutante of sixteen like Tracey was heard to scream with the sharpness of the pleasure when the pale ovals of her bottom cheeks and her pussy flesh came under the handling of our randy little temple dancer! Marit gasped and whimpered, tossed and twisted her head, squirmed her slim bare thighs as if trying to press the excitement back into her womb.

The thick and pearly dew of her passion began to gather and, in no time at all, Marit's knickers clung between her legs. Miss Jones, randy little minx that she is, was aware that the feel of the cotton pants in this state would make Marit even more exquisitely aware of her own arousal. Only when the fifteen-year-old pupil had been fully roused did Miss Jones pull the panties right down. How narrow were the trim young hips she now revealed, while Marit's slim bottom-cheeks seemed hardly on the threshold of womanhood. Now the agile fingers of the older girl moved in the most remorseless rhythm, rubbing and squeezing, stroking and tickling. You may imagine how Marit squirmed and gasped, for all the world as if in true distress, whose sounds are often hard to distinguish from the cries of pleasure.

She knew not whose fingers were working the magic spell upon her, which added to the charm of the situation. Yet, as one watched, it was evident after ten more minutes that the pattern of her movements changed. She ceased to tighten herself or resist. Opening her slim young thighs wider, she accepted Miss Jones's caresses, even showing how she yearned for them. Marit's lips parted, she breathed deeply, and her eyes closed gently and flutteringly in a dream of love.

Presently Miss Jones knelt behind her and applied her open mouth between Marit's slender thighs, whose inner surfaces shone wet with the youngster's slippery dew. There are as many secret lusts as there are human beings. Miss Jones has a perverse relish in tasting other girls during their excitement. She brought Marit off with sly dartings of her tongue and constant lipping and kissing of the roused and moistened folds of puss-flesh. Marit cried out softly, her legs trembling visibly and her tight young arse-cheeks squirming.

Holding her firmly after the climax, Miss Jones parted Marit's trim little buttocks and began to caress or tickle her between them.

My own future plans for Miss Aas involve a degree of unusual pleasures and I was pleased to see that Miss Jones had begun to sensitise her in the forbidden valley already! Our Scandinavian nymph squirmed and whined in protest for the next half hour. But the little beauty had her buttocks tickled and her bottom-crack caressed pitilessly. In a few weeks more we shall have awakened all her erotic responses in that sensitive area. By the time that Miss Jones finished with her, it was an hour before lunch. The hatch was unlocked and raised. Marit rather forlornly pulled up her knickers and denim. Presently she retired with eyes downcast. Do not lament for her, my dear. I was able to observe her through the spy-hole between our rooms. Marit dropped her pants again, lay down on her bed, and played with herself between her legs until it was necessary to knock on the door and remind her that lunch was ready. She will be a changed girl by the time she leaves here. And yet, Gussie, who will dare to deny that I have acted in the most moral fashion? Do you now begin to understand? Your own adoring Maude Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude XII. Augustus to Lady Maude Wight, 28 June My dear Maude, In answer to your question-I do not understand and am not sure that I wish to. The designs you have upon that unfortunate pupil Marit are so different from my own inclination towards Julie that I see no point of comparison between our feelings. I have decided that I will approach my idol-in the shop if necessary-and make all plain to her. I was wrong to suppose that she would at once love me for myself. Yet I am rich and perhaps she does not realise that. If I were able to arrange a marriage on that basis-if she were even to marry me for money-my devotion would be such that I feel sure love would grow between us. I shall wait a further week. If I am unable to attain my object by any other means, I will then put the case to her in these terms. Surely, if I offer such treasure, she will at least consent to hear me. I do not ask for the approval of my family. What can they or you know of my feelings in such a case? Write to me, my dearest, and tell me that we shall love each other as always. However, do not attempt to dissuade me. Your ever laving Augustus Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude XIII. Lady Maude to Mr. Bowler Villa Lola, 1 July My dear Friend, I enclose the latest letter from Lord A., hoping it may reach you before your departure from Venice. He is mad! Stark mad! Can anyone doubt that this latest infatuation has brought brain fever upon him? Marry him? Julie? A little whore who sits impudently on her little bottom, atop a counter-stool in a bookshop? Of course she will.

For his money. She will rob him and leave him. In the name of friendship, I beg you to take the most ruthless measures to put an end to this tragi-comedy. At once and with no holding back! Otherwise I foresee the worst. He will strangle the girl Sian-about which I do not care. He will then marry the little whore Julie. I care about that more than I can express. Act quickly and with resolve, dear friend. You shall name your reward. M.