The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 197: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XIX ST. JAMES’S PALACE In one of the earlier chapters of this work we have de- scribed Florence Eaton. About nineteen years of age, invested with a Madonna-like beauty, the innocence of which surrounded her as with a celestial halo, possessing a complexion of the purest white, dazzlingly transparent, and with the gentlest tint of the rose-leaf upon her cheeks, she was a being to whom the epithet of angelic may be applied. Her hair, of the lightest brown tinged with a golden hue, and seeming in the sunbeams to be of that precious shade which belongs to the silk when gathered fresh from the silkworm, was worn in a profusion of ringlets falling upon her bright and polished shoulders. The tran- quil lustre as well as the hue of heaven was in her eyes of soft azure; no coral was brighter than her lips; no Grecian statue was ever chiselled with a more classical precision than that which marked her exquisite profile. Then her shape, we have already described it as that of the sylph, blending perfection of symmetry with grace and elegance of carriage. The beautiful arching of the neck was of swanlike curvature, the bust, gently developed, was perfect in its virgin contours, and as she walked, her form exhibited all the willowy elasticity of girlhood. Gay and happy in her artless innocence was this charming creature, and in her liveliest moments her laugh came gushing forth so merrily melodious that it seemed as if the teeth appearing between the parting coral of the lips were them- selves strings of musical pearls. Guile and deception were unknown to her. She was as ignorant of the duplicities, the falsities, and the artificialities of the world as the bird of paradise in its own genial clime is ignorant of the hail, the 172 Gomicbdooks (E(@)