'Stop, oh stop!', Astrid moaned, though her protests were now so feeble and her divine form so throbbing still with pleasure that she was but as a limp doll. She permitted herself to be weakly drawn off the bed by the two maids, her knees buckling as she was led along the corridor to a bathroom of such curious aspect as Astrid had never seen before.

The bath itself was marble and like no other she had encountered. It so shallow that it seemed but a trough of elongated oval shape set upon four short and gilded plinths. Warm and scented water lay already within it to a depth of scarce more than eighteen inches. Immediately above the bath hung gilded chains which extended down from hooks. On seeing these, Astrid uttered a cry of alarm and would have urged herself back again towards the door had not the two maids forced her into the bath holding her in a standing posture. Marie clasped her tightly about her slender waist, while her companion took the chains and fastened them with circlets of iron about Astrid's wrists. Held upright thus, Astrid commenced beseeching the pair as she would never otherwise have deigned to do with servants.

'Let me go, I beg you! My father will reward you well! Oh, why am I chained?'.

'Tut, tut, how the young lady questions things', laughed Marie, taking a fine, large sponge and lathering it well with perfumed soap. 'Whether your Papa will reward you or you him is something for the future to decide. As to your bonds, they are but to keep you still while you are bathed. Open your legs now, Miss!'.

Uttering a rattling cry, Astrid could but hang her head back in quivering shame and wonder as the warm sponge laved her legs, moving ever upwards until its sensuous surface was worked by Marie's subtle hand beneath her dell. Feeling the warm water, Astrid haplessly rotated her bottom. The sensations she had already endured under Julia's caresses had been exquisite, yet that they were the devil's work she was convinced and strove still to suppress them.