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.