The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 386: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

352 THE COURT OF LONDON unmarred by its fulness; and that, at all events, it was of the purest virginal whiteness. Her shoulders were well filled out, slightly rounded, and beautifully sloping; and her waist was of a symmetry properly consistent with the amplitude of this magnificent bust and the large projection of the hips. Her arms were of sculptural massiveness, but admirably moulded, round, plump, and of dazzling white- ness; and her hands were perfectly ravishing with their long taper fingers and their pellucid almond-shaped nails. Her feet and ankles were of corresponding beauty; and altogether her form, from the throat to the sole of the foot, was of a splendour and a voluptuousness which denoted a woman grandly handsome and fervently impassioned. For who could doubt that the black silk mask concealed a face whose features were in perfect keeping with the richness of contour, the fineness of proportion, and the elegance of figure which we have endeavoured to describe? Lord Montgomery’s eyes, in sweeping over the lady’s person, embraced at a glance all that we have taken some minutes to delineate. “Yes, I am Lord Florimel,” he said, at length, and with a voice as effectually disguised as when he exchanged those brief and rapid observations with the Flower Girl. “ And are you, lady, that same adorable but mysterious creature who fifteen months ago — ‘Hush, my lord, hush! ’”? murmured the Circassian Slave, although Montgomery was speaking only in a whisper. “You remember the promise which I then made you — ”’ “Yes, that we should meet again, dear lady,’’ continued the earl; ‘‘ but an age has elapsed since then, and I began to fear that the pledge on your part would be never kept.”’ ‘Then you have wished to meet me again, Gabriel? ” said the lady, in a voice trembling with ineffable emotions; and she walked slowly aside with Earl Montgomery as she thus spoke. ‘“‘ Oh, how can you ask me, adorable creature? ”’ exclaimed. the nobleman, who remembered, as his looks now dwelt devouringly upon her superb form, all that Florimel had told him of the impassioned ardour and frenetic desires which animated the heroine of his four hours’ enjoyment; and the earl felt his own imagination already wandering amidst those Elysian blisses which had been so faithfully COnnicooolks (C(O)