The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER II AN ARISTOCRATIC PAIR Ir was about noon on the day of the marriage just de- scribed, and a beautiful lady was lounging negligently upon a sofa in a handsomely furnished apartment at a mansion in Grosvenor Street. She was about six and twenty years of age, of middle height, and of dark but clear complexion. There was a peculiar beauty in the full lips of bright scarlet; and these, together with her flashing eyes and decisively pencilled brows, indicated the warmth of her temperament. Her countenance was of an Oriental style of loveliness, irradiated, as it were, with a dark yet glowing lustre. Her hair was not precisely of sable blackness, but had that purple and glossy hue which made it shining, soft, and smooth as velvet; its luxuriance was remarkable, and, the lady’s toilet not having as yet been achieved, the heavy tresses hung in massive clusters upon the firm, plump, and polished shoulders. Her profile was softly aquiline, without anything approaching to prominency of feature, save in respect to the lips, which were luscious and full, but not coarse. The teeth which they revealed, when parting in smiles that breathed a tender sensuousness, were of pearly whiteness; and her looks were brilliant and animated, with a provocative expression of subdued wantonness. Her bust was purely sculptural, the chest being somewhat narrow, and the bosoms by no means exuberant, but of sufficient development to mark the statue-like contours of her shape. They were well detached, rising in perfect hemispheres, and sustaining the beauty of their proportions by their own firmness; for at the moment we are describing this lady she wore neither corset nor artificial means 10 (COU () IDoOakKs (E(0)