The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 369: what you’re looking at

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

352 THE COURT OF LONDON Meanwhile the voluptuous Emma, immediately on gaining her own apartments, had hastened to throw off her apparel. Then unlocking a wardrobe, she took thence a frock coat, a military stock, a pair of trousers with a stripe of gold lace on the outward seam of each leg, a pair of Wellington boots, and a hat. If any one could have peeped into the chamber at this moment and beheld that young woman undoing her feminine toilet and preparing for her masculine one, it would have been impossible to believe that she had gone through such a severe trial as she had so recently experienced. Upon her countenance was no trace of those feelings which had ere now been so vividly excited at Maravelli’s house. On the contrary, the flush of a blissful animation was upon her cheeks, the light of pleasure flashed from beneath the silken iringes of her hazel eyes, a sunny smile sat upon her lips, which, so far from being dry and feverish with recent horror, were moist as wet coral and delicious as a rich, pulpy fruit. Her bosom rose and fell with quick heavings, but not in- dicative of either affliction or alarm. No, those voluptuous undulations of that superb bust were produced by the anticipations of love’s delight which fired the soul within. She disapparelled herself, we say, of all her feminine gear, and then began to assume the masculine garb which she knew became her so well. Even to her very corset had she laid aside, and though the rich contours of her bust de- pended not upon artificial support or compression for their shape, roundness, or firmness, yet was it now easier to im- prison those glowing globes of snow within the tightly fitting irock.coat. The Wellington boots, made with such exquisite delicacy, fitted her beautifully shaped feet in the most faultless manner, the upper leathers ascending to the middle of the swell of her robust but admirably modelled legs. The pantaloons, however, were made somewhat wide and with large plaits, so as to conceal the feminine shapeliness of the limbs, and give them the appearance of that unde- viating straightness which especially characterizes the male figure. Her hair was arranged in such a manner as to flow in a luxuriant mass upon her shoulders, and when this was done, she proceeded by the aid of gum-water to fasten a pair of false whiskers in their proper place. This she did with an air so coquettish, so full of arch delight, that it was EORMIELIOO KS m (E(0)