Gynecocracy

I felt overwhelmed with chagrin and despite, when I dwelt upon all the feminine airs and graces into enduing myself with which I had been cajoled by this imposture. And yet, after all, my tyrant was a woman. What a complexion, what a skin, what limbs she possessed! What knowledge of physical sensations, what physical ecstasy she could cause! How entrancing she would look in petticoats.

I wondered she had the hardihood, now that I knew the secret, to appear that morning without them. Mademoiselle knew it. Perhaps 332

Lady Alfred was not aware that Beatrice was in it too. Without nicely weighing the consequences it struck me how gloriously I could revenge myself by letting the secret out at breakfast before the girls if an opportunity should occur. She would be overwhelmed with shame and confusion. Unless she was a brazen harridan, she must have sufficient womanliness and modesty left to be abashed and horrified when she was discovered to be a lady so wanting in proper feeling as to dress herself in men's clothes.

I did not in my indignation consider, as it would have been much better for me if I had, that I was in her power and in Mademoiselle's, and that they could turn the tables on me cruelly, and that they certainly would, if I so exposed my tormentor.

The three girls looked fresh and brisk in the bright morning light in their dainty maidenly frocks. They did not compliment me upon my appearance, Agnes remarking that I looked "quite haggard, and had black circles about my eyes," and proceeding in her kittenish way to tease me.

Beatrice remarked that "most brides looked so after the first night," an observation which made my hands itch to smack her face. Maud gave me an intelligent glance in which there was some desire and some sympathy. She whisked her skirts about her lower half, and so managed them as to make the form of her exquisite limbs very apparent beneath them, but faithful to the haughty indifference that characterized her, she said nothing.

Mademoiselle was more languishing than usual and her air conveyed that she possessed some secret source of amusement.

Lady Alfred Ridlington entered the room last and astonished me with her perfect self-possession. I regarded her with contempt as a fraud just as I suppose Beatrice regarded me.

I now carefully observed Lady Ridlington's round thighs, breasts, and form, and wondered however I or anyone else could ever have been duped into the belief that she was what her clothes denoted. But suggestion of a fact often goes so far as to make one discredit the evidence of one's own senses in respect of it.

She spoke quite gaily, quite en preux cavalier, to Mademoiselle, who responded in a similar tone of gallantry.

I was much entertained at Lady Alfred's perfect acting, and debonnaire, careless manner. Even before my eyes, which she soon perceived fixed upon her, she did not quail in the least, but in her own glance there was a latent threat and a cold stare as much as to say, "I have not done with you yet."

I did not concern myself much at the time with this, for my attention was occupied afresh with the idea how delicious she would be in her own raiment.

I was brooding thus when she asked whether Mademoiselle did not ever find the need of a tutor with such very masterful young ladies.

Beatrice shrugged her shoulders impatiently at this while a curve of intense contempt settled upon her beautifully moulded lips. Maud and Agnes looked up astonished. Maud, with slight disgust and impatience, Agnes, with open-eyed and innocent wonder.

Mademoiselle's eyes sparkled and glittered with the various frolics and high jinks the proposal suggested and I saw the colour come to her face as she bit her lip to repress the spirit of mischief which seemed to well up. The same idea, however, must have struck her as well as myself.

Lady Alfred looked young enough to be Agnes' little brother. Whether she was in reality older than Mademoiselle, who was not yet twenty-four, had been puzzling me all breakfast time.

Dressed as she was, she looked a baby boy-a chubby, smiling, careless, good-natured, overgrown baby. She was perpetually laughing and smiling.

When a woman's age perplexes me, I invariably endeavour to make her laugh heartily. The colour of the gums about the teeth, the teeth themselves, and, above all, the manner in which the skin wrinkles, at once enable me to make a shrewd guess at her age. An old woman who looks young when her face is in repose, will, when she laughs, immediately disclose lines, whilst her skin will have a more or less parchmenty appearance, however scientifically she has used her cosmetics.

Now Lady Alfred Ridlington was perpetually laughing, and her skin was as fresh as a child's-yet about the eyes there was a look of old worldliness which betokened a knowledge of life; and noticing closely Mademoiselle's demeanour towards her I came to the conclusion that she had lived a fast life but was some eight or nine months younger than my governess.