The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 141: what you’re looking at

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

122 REYNOLDS’ WORKS Chifin was about to make some further observation, when the door opened and in walked a person who at first sight would have been taken for one of the male sex, but whom on a nearer survey it was not very difficult to discover to be a woman in man’s apparel. For a female, she was of a commanding height, being at least five feet ten inches, and was remarkably though somewhat coarsely handsome. Her features were large but regular; her complexion was of a clear olive, and had the flush of excitement upon her cheeks. Her eyes were large, of the deepest black, and strangely bright; they had an exceeding boldness in their glance, and could look any one full in the face, not frankly, but with a hardihood and audacity altogether unbecoming her sex. Yet her look was not that of wanton impudence nor of lustful passion, because it was fixed just the same upon every one who came for the first time within its reach, whether male or female, handsome or ugly, old or young; it was a look, in short, which seemed meant to penetrate whatever disguise the object of its scrutiny might wear or whatever thoughts were passing in the depths of the soul. It was a strange and overbearing look, not only scrutinizing, but also full of a bold defiance, and as much as to say that though the possessor of those large dark eyes was a woman in sex, yet that she was a man in daring and in dauntlessness. Without being at all inclined to stoutness, her figure was largely and finely made, upright as the form of an Amazon, without the slightest appearance of that gentle inclination or stoop of the shoulders which belongs to feminine grace, and with an elevated carriage of the head which completed her erect appearance. She was dressed in a handsome frock coat, buttoned around the waist, but open at the bosom, so as to display the fine cambric shirt-front and the exquisite frill. This frill, by occupying, as it were, the interval be- tween the swell of the bosoms, concealed their fulness and thus aided the general effects of the apparel in giving a masculine air to the female wearer. The edges of a figured silk waistcoat were seen under the lapels of her coat; she wore a stand-up shirt collar, and had a shawl-neckerchief tied with a care that Beau Brummel might have envied. She had on black pantaloons, and possessing a remarkable straightness and evident symmetry of limbs, that portion of her masculine garb became her admirably. Patent-leather EONMIE OOO KS (Q) (E(O)