A Fair Fraud — page 258: what you’re looking at

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

oP oo A Fair Fraud 247 _. the obstinacy of old and narrow-minded persons, they were furiously angry with the handsome mother and daughter who had imposed upon their credulity, and had, as Mrs Drury put it, ‘nearly made fools of a respectable family.’ It was the household fetish, before which so many worthy persons bow the knee, which had been outraged and insulted in the estimation of these good people. For the heathen idol of the Christian home is that Banshee-like deity, known by the name of ‘Respectability.” Set up in the most honoured corner of the house, it is daily burnished and polished with dilisxent adoration by its worshippers, and if but a breath tarnish its pinchbeck gilding, or a smear besmirch its smug, complacent visage, forthwith it sets up -'a wailing and a howling and a hooting horrible to hear and almost impossible to pacify. Like the lioness despoiled of her whelps, the house- hold goddess (for certainly the creature 1s of the female sex) refuses to be comforted. Nevertheless, Marion strove hard against this formidable enemy. She constantly urged Hester's superiority over her mother; she praised her looks and her heart, and en- deavoured to point out her brave and praise- worthy conduct at the conclusion of her visit. And, moreover, she lost no opportunity of GORMGIOO