What if those who have despised each the
other's sins, are set down to stare at them together, until each
finds his own iniquity to be hateful.
Of the latter, the respectably selfish class, was Borland her
brother. He knew his presence a protection to his sister, yet gave
himself no trouble to look after her. As the apple of his eye would
he cherish the fluid in which he hoped to discover some secret
process of nature; but he was not his sister's keeper, and a drop
of mud more or less cast into her spirit was to him of no
consequence. Yet he would as soon have left a woman he wanted to
marry within reach of the miasms that now and then surrounded Joan,
as unwarned in the dark by the cage of a tiger.
At home, therefore, because of the poverty of the family, the
ill-repute of her father, and the pride and self-withdrawal of her
brother, she led a lonely life where everything around her was left
to run wild. The lawn was more of a meadow than a lawn, and the
park a mere pasture for cattle. The shrubbery was an impassable
tangle, and the flower garden a wilderness. She could do nothing to
set things right, and lived about the place like a poor relation.
At school, which she left at fifteen, she had learned nothing so as
to be of any vital use to her--possibly left it a little less
capable than she went. For some of her natural perceptions could
hardly fail to be blunted by the artificial, false, and selfish
judgments and regards which had there surrounded her.
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