Some article I read -- I no longer remember which one, but it isn't important -- tried to claim that pre-20th century female couples inevitably involved an age difference and therefore followed the classical model of an older mentor and a younger "beloved". It seems to me that this is a case of finding what you're looking for, because even when a couple are very close in age--for example, fellow students at a boarding school--it may happen that one is seen as the older, more experienced figure and the other as the follower. Further, when certain behaviors are coded as "motherly" then acts of caretaking can appear to code as an age-differentiated relationship regardless of actual years.
Female couples have looked to a wide range of types of relationships as models for how they viewed or talked about their bond. To some extent this is inevitable if society has not offered you a neutral "default" understanding of the dynamics of a same-sex couple. I get a bit uneasy when an author points to an age-differentiated female couple and starts talking about "mother-daughter" dynamics because it invokes some pernicious stereotypes about homosexuality that aren't raised in the context of even greater age gaps in m/f relationships.
And yet, the language of mothers and daughters was a thing that some female couples used. Perhaps in some cases it was a way of creating an acceptable context for their feelings. But using the language and symbols of the mother-daughter bond (or of a sister bond) is a very different thing than actual incestuous relationships, and I feel this isn't always emphasized when the topic is raised.
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