And one other thing regarding him was whispered in the echoes, which has been whispered by all true echoes for ages and ages.
No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with a blameless though an unchanged mind, when she was a wife and a mother, but her children had a strange sympathy with him-an instinctive delicacy of pity for him.
What fine hidden sensibilities are touched in such a case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so here.
Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew.
The little boy had spoken of him, almost at the last.
"Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!"
Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the law, like some great engine forcing itself through turbid water, and dragged his useful friend in his wake, like a boat towed astern.
As the boat so favoured is usually in a rough plight, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a swamped life of it.
But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so much easier and stronger in him than any stimulating sense of desert or disgrace, made it the life he was to lead; and he no more thought of emerging from his state of lion's jackal, than any real jackal may be supposed to think of rising to be a lion.
Stryver was rich; had married a florid widow with property and three boys, who had nothing particularly shining about them but the straight hair of their dumpling heads.