The other type of party was arranged only in more knowing circles. The guests were fewer and more selectively chosen. Discretion was total, for all knew that the merest buzz of scandal beyond the porticos of the mansion would eventually ruin other such occasions. Within this understanding, certain delicious licence was permitted and orgies were not unknown. I am speaking of gatherings, of course, of no more than a score of guests, including the host and hostess.

Perhaps I should say also that these were country gentry whose morals had altered not a wit from those of their immediate forebears. They preserved their traditions. If a young woman was to be “trodden,” it was accepted that she should be. She was expected to return the virile salute of the lusty penis with the same passion that it was accorded her. Many a fair bottom have I seen wriggling for the first time on a manly piston while murmurs of encouragement spurred its flushed possessor on.

Often if a girl were shy, she would be coaxed and fondled by several of the ladies into receiving her injection. Flushed cheeks and snowy breasts were exposed- an apparently burning anguish showing in the eyes as her skirts were raised-all such were salt to the occasion. Girls too bold in their ways provided little sport for an expectant assembly, and such as might have been were given sufficient hints in private to bring them to struggle and sob with great realism while they were laid open-legged upon a dining room table or a waiting divan, there to receive their first dosage of ardent sperm.

But I digress-a habit I must in these early stages of my memoirs avoid. It is of a late hour that I speak and I would not have wandered from my room on that Saturday night, so far past midnight, had the servant not forgotten to fill my bedside carafe of water.

Wine had made me thirsty. Believing all to be asleep, I opened my door quietly, padded in my nightdress along the corridors and began to descend the wide, curving staircase. At mid-point, however, I stopped. There was a light below. It shone from the dining room where the door stood half open. I heard voices-a faint laugh.