A series of quotes from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (the bolded parts are the best ones):
“The personage was ... about her age and size, and might have been her wraith or double, but for the fact that it was a lady much more beautifully dressed than she. Indeed, comparatively indifferent as Elizabeth-Jane was to dress, unless for some temporary whim or purpose, her eyes were arrested by the artistic perfection of the lady’s appearance. Her gait, too, had a flexuousness about it, which seemed to avoid angularity. It was a revelation to Elizabeth that human beings could reach this stage of external development—she had never suspected it. She felt all the freshness and grace to be stolen from herself on the instant by the neighbourhood of such a stranger. And this was in face of the fact that Elizabeth could now have been writ handsome, while the young lady was simply pretty. Had she been envious she might have hated the woman; but she did not do that—she allowed herself the pleasure of feeling fascinated. [...] The only way of getting a single pleasant thought to go to sleep upon after this was by recalling the lady she had seen that day, and hoping she might see her again. [...] Elizabeth-Jane looked wistfully at her questioner. She found that her questioner was looking at her, turned her eyes down; and then seemed compelled to look back again. [...] ‘I have been staying at Budmouth for a few days while my house was getting ready. The house I am going into is that one they call High-Place Hall—the old stone one looking down the lane to the market ... Now will you think over my proposal ... ?’ Elizabeth, her eyes shining at this prospect of a change from an unbearable position, joyfully assented; and the two parted at the gate of the churchyard. [...] Her mind dwelt upon nothing else but the stranger, and the house, and her own chance of living there, all the rest of the day. [...] When the lamps were lighted, and it was yet not so dark as to render chimneys, attics, and roofs invisible, Elizabeth, almost with a lover’s feeling, thought she would like to look at the outside of High-Place Hall. She went up the street in that direction. [...] The impression that this woman of comparatively practised manner had made upon the studious girl’s mind was so deep that she enjoyed standing under an opposite archway merely to think that the charming lady was inside the confronting walls, and to wonder what she was doing. Her admiration for the architecture of that front was entirely on account of the inmate it screened. [...] The young lady had come.Her presence so exceptionally substantiated the girl’s utmost hopes that she almost feared her good fortune. [...] ‘Well, have you chosen?’ she asked flinging down the last card. ‘No,’ stammered Elizabeth, arousing herself from a reverie. 'I forgot, I was thinking of—you, and me—and how strange it is that I am here.’ Miss Templeman looked at Elizabeth-Jane with interest, and laid down the cards. [...] Lucetta’s tongue had for a moment outrun her discretion ... Elizabeth had tempted her to make free, and a deliberately formed resolve had been broken.It could not, however, have been broken in safer company. Lucetta’s words went no further.”
clearly, homoeroticism in old books is not confined to men...