LITTLE WINDFALL

Don't be deceived by dialogue along the lines of ''Tut, my little gallant, curb your tongue.'' Louisa May Alcott may have written in the flowery 19th-century manner of her day, but A LONG FATAL LOVE CHASE (Random House, $21), a previously unpublished novel by the forward-thinking author of Little Women, suggests that Alcott would have made a valuable addition to the writing stable of Harlequin Romances or One Life to Live.

Just as Jo March cranked out romantic thrillers to make money in Little Women, so Alcott hustled ''blood and thunder stories,'' as she called them, supporting herself (when few women of the time could do so) by writing under gender-bending bylines. But with Love Chase, apparently, Alcott even by any other name had gone too far for her squeamish Victorian publisher, who reneged on the commission. Perhaps James R. Elliott, who signed Alcott up for a serial novel to appear in his magazine The Flag of Our Union, objected to Rosamond, the heroine, saying ''I'd gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom.'' Perhaps the gentleman didn't like the undainty idea of obsessional love -- Rose flees from her seductive, mysteriously sinister husband when she discovers dirty secrets about his past, and he pursues her through Europe (the ''fatal'' in the title should give you some clue as to the outcome). Maybe it was Alcott's inclusion of bigamy, murder, and suicide in the mix, or her cool modern interest in sexual desires and the tempestuous currents of addictive relationships, that made Elliott tug so nervously at his whiskers.

Maybe if enough readers had studied A Long Fatal Love Chase over the years, there would be no need for books like Smart Women, Foolish Choices. As it is, any 20th-century reader who has read romance novels, sex-and-shopping novels, gothic novels, Krantz-and-company novels, or how-to-be-your-own-woman novels, or who has watched daytime or nighttime soaps, will be charmed but hardly shocked by this breathless romp. ''Tell me your hopes and dreams,'' Phillip Tempest offers Rosamond in their first meeting (in customary Alcott fashion, the alluring man is many years the 18-year-old heroine's senior). And she replies, ''...I hope to be free as air, to see the world, to know what ease and pleasure are, to have many friends and to be dearly loved.''

You tell him, sister. The combination of feminist principles and florid writing style makes for a curious read: There's a lot of bosom heaving and eye flashing; yet at its core, Love Chase showcases an alluring, inspiring, made-for-movies heroine. Watch for her at a theater near you. B-