Sentence:  Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a <WSD>family</WSD> perhaps at a critical moment, when the <WSD>family</WSD> is just assuming the robes of respectability:...it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  A group of people who are closely related to one another (by blood, marriage or adoption); kin; for example, a set of parents and their children; an immediate family.