The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 153: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XII ERNESTINA’ AND THE PRINCE Iv was about eleven o’clock in the forenoon of the day following the incidents just related, and Ernestina was alone in the Crimson Drawing-room. She was seated near a harp, and it was evident from her looks and her manner that she was studying a part which she had to play. We do not mean aught in reference to music, although the instrument was there close at hand, but in reference to coquetry and seductive allurement. Her hair was arranged in massive bands over her alabaster temples, and gathered with a graceful sweep in such a way that it showed the small and well-folded ears. She had selected a dress which displayed her fine form to its most exciting and sensuous advantage, leaving the white plump shoulders bare, and allowing the grand fulness of the bosom to swell in more than half its glowing amplitude above the body of the robe. By a gentle inclination of her figure toward the harp, she was enabled to give her bright and polished neck so swanlike a curve that nothing could exceed the beauty of its arching gracefulness; and, with an ad- mirable prescience of coquettish effect mingled with a seductive languor, she knew that this position would enable the eye of a beholder to trace the symmetry of that sweet neck in its gradual and downward expansion into the noble foun- dation on which it rested. | The volume and voluptuous form of her bust were in this manner developed to the fullest advantage; and as she leaned toward the harp with all the seeming ease and grace- fulness of this really studied attitude, she threw into her looks a melancholy softness which added to the power of her great beauty. Her whole figure was thus sensuously 136 Gomichookssco