I Forbid the Banns! — page 296: what you’re looking at

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

286 “7 FORBID THE BANNS!” means an unlikely contingency, for Brackenshire contained many hunting ladies who could bring the blush of shame to the faces of their own grooms—a feat in itself—with their strong language. Well, the fast young men had gone to their homes some- what tardily; and no doubt they would entertain their mothers and sisters with an account of how the woman who was living at the Court had presumed to give herself the airs of a prude. Howthe mothers and sisters would hold up their hands and raise their eyebrows at the notion of That Woman pretending to have something of the prude about her! The mothers and the sisters, who will not visit a young woman whom they believe to belong to a naughty world, are always delighted to learn all that can be told them—sometimes even more—regarding the naughty people and their naughty ways. Naughtiness may be read about, may be seen on the stage, may be imitated in dress, may be stared at through . spectacles with handles, but it must on no account be visited. Charlton made up his mind that he would take Bertha to London as soon as possible. He was tired of the county and the county people. In London they could have as much society as they wished—the society of men: and women whose names were known in the world—who had other aims in life beside killing foxes. He knew that in London Bertha would be visited, and that cards in heaps would arrive for her by every post, inviting her to dinners, to dances, to private concerts, to street Arab missions, to woman’s suffrage meetings, to hypnotizing séances, to scientific conversaztont, to boating parties, to first nights at the plays, to Exeter Hall meetings, and to all those delightful functions of a London season. He knew that people in London are glad to receive strangers on their own merits; and in Bertha’s case the Gomichooks (€(0)