Serious trouble threatened the Sarradet household also—not of the sort which impended over the Lisles, but one not less common. There was increasing strife between father and son. Raymond's taste for pleasure showed no sign of being sated; he took no warning from the scrape out of which Sidney Barslow's strong arm had rescued him; he spared neither time nor money in seeking the delights to which his youth and his temperament inclined him. Old Mr. Sarradet was ageing; he grew more grumpy and crusty, fonder of his hoards, less patient when he saw money wasted, more fearful of leaving the family business at the mercy of a spendthrift. He grumbled and scolded; he made scenes. Raymond met them with sullen hostility, or took to avoiding them by absenting himself from the house. If home were made uncomfortable, there were plenty of other places to go to! The more his father would bridle him, the more he kicked.

Marie tried to hold them together, to patch up quarrels, to arrange truces, to persuade each of them to meet the other half-way. Her task was the more difficult since she herself was held as a threat over her brother's head. She should have the hoards, she should have the business, unless Raymond would mend his ways! The old man's menace turned her brother's anger against her; almost openly he accused her of bad faith and hypocrisy—of aiming at stepping into his shoes. The charge was cruel, for she loved him. But he made a stranger and at last nearly an enemy of her. Once she had hoped to work on him through Amabel Osling, but Amabel, slighted in favour of more recent and more gaudy attractions, stood now on her dignity and would make no approaches to Raymond. She came to the house still, and was as friendly as ever to father and daughter, but distant towards the son on the rare occasions when she found him there. Joe Halliday was no use in serious straits like these; he took everything as it came, for others as well as for himself; his serenely confident, "Oh, he's a young fool, of course, but it'll come all right, you'll see," did not seem to Marie to meet the situation. And Arthur Lisle? Her old feeling forbade the idea of troubling Mr. Lisle with such matters; they would certainly grate on him. Besides, he was—somehow—a little bit of a stranger now.

It was Sidney Barslow's opportunity; he was well fitted to use the chance that circumstances gave him. The strong will which enabled him to put a curb on his own inclinations, so soon as he had an adequate motive, made him a man to turn to in distress. His past indulgences, in so far as they were known or conjectured, themselves gave him authority. He spoke of what he knew, of what he had experienced and overcome. Seeing him, the old father could not deny that young men might pass through a season of folly, and yet be sound at heart and able to steady themselves after a little while. Raymond could not call him a Puritan or an ignoramus, nor accuse him of not understanding the temptations which beset his own path.

Sidney was honest in his efforts. He felt a genuine remorse for having set young Raymond's feet on the primrose path along which they now raced at such dangerous speed. About his own little excursions along the same track he felt no such pangs of conscience; fellows were different; some could pull up when they liked; he could. It seemed that Raymond could not; therefore he repented of having started Raymond at all, and recognised a duty laid on himself of stopping him if possible. And the same motives which had enabled him to forsake the dangerous path urged him to turn Raymond also from it. Marie's approval had been his mark in the one case; in the other it was her gratitude; in both her favour. The pleasure he derived from seeing her trust him and lean on him was something quite new in his life and appealed strongly to his courageous and masculine temper. He would not fail her, any more than he had failed her brother in his need.

And his reward? He knew very well what he wanted—if only he could get it. He did not deal in doubts and hesitations. He had not sacrificed his indulgences without being quite sure of what he wanted in exchange. His mind, if primitive and unrefined, was direct and bold. His emotions were of the same simple and powerful type. Courting a girl was to him no matter of dreaming, romancing, idealising, fearing, palpitating. It was just a man seeking the mate that pleased him.

Marie was in no mood to be courted yet; her dream was too recently dispelled, and her steady nature could not leap to sudden change. But her eyes were on his strong qualities again; she looked at him less through Arthur Lisle's spectacles; that side of her which liked him could now assert itself. She turned to his aid readily, and, with her shrewd calculation seconding the impulse of friendship, made his company seem as welcome for its own sake as for the services it promised.

"You always bring a breath of comfort with you, Sidney," she told him gratefully.

Sidney was honest with her. "It's not much good. He won't listen to me any more." He shook his head in puzzle. "I can't think where he gets the money! You tell me the old man has cut off supplies, but I know he races, and I know he plays baccarat—and you may be sure he doesn't win on a balance. Besides he—well, he must get through a good bit in other ways. He must be raising the wind somehow. But it can't last."

It could not. One day old Sarradet came home from business almost collapsed. Men had come to his shop—his cherished City shop, hoary with the respectability of a hundred-and-fifty years, parading the 'Royal Warrant' of a third successive Sovereign—asking where his son was, brandishing writs, truculently presuming that Mr. Sarradet would "set the matter right." One more vicious than the rest, a jeweller, talked of false pretences and illegal pawning—not of a writ or a settlement, but of a summons or a warrant. He had been very savage, and the old man, ashamed and terrified, had pushed him into his own private room and there heard his ultimatum—the ring and the bangle, or their value, in twenty-four hours, or an application to a magistrate. And where was Raymond? He had not been home the night before. He was not at the West End shop. The poor old fellow babbled lamentations and threats—he would not pay, he had done with the scoundrel, here was a pretty end to an honourable life! When Marie knelt by him and put her arms about him, he fairly burst into tears.

The world of reckless living and dishonest shifts—both father and daughter were strangers to it. At her wits' end Marie telephoned for Sidney Barslow. By the time he came, she had got the old man to go to bed, weeping for his son, for himself, for his money, utterly aghast at doings so mad and disastrous. A pitiful sight! She met Sidney with tears in her eyes, full of the dismal story. "What are we to do?" she wailed, quite bereft of her usual composure and courage. The thing was too difficult, too dreadful.

"The first thing is to find him," said Sidney in his quick decisive way. He looked at his watch. "It's a bit too early now; in a couple of hours' time I may be able to lay my hands on him."

"Can you really? How? Oh, I was sure you'd be able to help!"

"Well, you see, Marie, I—er—know the ropes. I think I can find him—or somebody who'll put me on his track."

"Yes, that's where you're such a help." How she was pardoning those past indulgences! In her heart she was thanking heaven for them, almost admiring them! Wrong as they were, they taught a man things which made him ever so useful to women in distress about prodigal sons and brothers, "And what will you do when you do find him?"

"Frighten him pretty well to death, if I can," Sidney answered grimly. "I fancy our friend the jeweller may turn out a blessing in disguise. The news of criminal proceedings will be a bit of a soberer. The young ass!" Because it was so easy to enjoy yourself without being involved in criminal proceedings! "But, I say, you know," he went on, "the governor'll have to pay up."

"You must persuade him. I don't believe I can, Sidney."

"Oh, you can do that right enough. After all, I don't suppose it'll break him exactly. I daresay, though, the young 'un has run into a tidy lot. Still we can square 'em, I expect. Don't look so awfully cut up, Marie."

"I was just off my head till you came." She held out both her hands for him to grasp. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sidney!"

"That's all right, Marie. And, look here, if I find him, I shan't bring him here. I expect he and the old man get on one another's nerves. There's a room at my place. I'll take him there. You put some things in a bag for him, and I'll take it."

"Will you? It would be better they shouldn't meet—with father as he is."

"And you may be sure that when I've got him, I won't let him go. And we'll see about the money to-morrow."

She was infinitely comforted, immensely grateful. If he had sown wild oats, what wisdom he had gleaned from the crop! A meeting between father and son just now might be the end of all things, finally fatal! She packed the bag and gave it to her trusted emissary. "What should we have done without you!" was her cry again.

"Just leave it to me," he told her, his strong thick lips set resolutely.

With the knowledge acquired in folly but tamed now to the service of wisdom, morality, and the interests of the Sarradet business, he found young Raymond without much difficulty—and found him just in time. More than money was giving out, more than strict attention to financial ethics was in jeopardy. The little excitable fellow was pretty well at the end of his tether physically also. His nerves were at breaking strain. Pleasure had become a narcotic against thought; if that alone would not serve, drink was called in as an ally. On the verge of a collapse, he was desperately postponing it by the surest way to make it in the end complete.

Sidney, robust of body and mind, beheld him with mingled pity and contempt. He himself could have lived the life for years with faculties and powers unimpaired, really not the worse for it, save in his pocket and his morals; only prudential considerations and newly awakened hopes had, on a cool calculation, turned him from it. But Raymond, if he did not land in jail first, would land in hospital speedily. Amidst the jeers and sneers of the hardier denizens of those regions, Sidney carried him to his own flat and put him to bed like a naughty worn-out child.

In the morning came the lecture. "No end of a jawing! I pitched it in hot and strong, I can tell you," Sidney subsequently reported to Marie. Poor Raymond lay in bed with a racking headache and trembling hands, and heard his sins rehearsed and (worse still) his feebleness exhibited.

"You're not the chap for this kind of thing," Sidney told him. "Chuck it, my boy! Seek milder delights. Oh, I know it's a bit my fault in the beginning. But I thought you'd a head on your shoulders and some sense in it. I'm not against a bust now and then; but this sort of rot——! And what's this fool's business about a ring and a bangle? You're in a pretty tight place there, young fellow."

Almost amid sobs the story of these unfortunate articles of jewellery—bought on credit and pawned, by and with the advice and consent of the donee, a few days later—came out. Sidney brandished the terrors of the law; the figure of the justly irate tradesman took on terrifying proportions. If only that dread apparition, with its suggestion of policemen, of locked doors and bolts shot home, of Black Maria and picking oakum—if only that apparition could be exorcised, there was nothing Raymond would not do, promise, and abjure. Sidney jeered while he threatened and grinned while he preached, but he did both to good purpose, with all the convincing knowledge and experience of a reformed criminal at a revivalist meeting, with all the zeal of a doctor whose reputation is staked upon a cure.

Then the thorough-going long-headed man went off to his own employers and arranged to begin his approaching summer holiday immediately. That done, he tackled the writ-bearers and the fearful apparition with the aid of a sharp lawyer of his acquaintance. With threats of giving as much trouble as possible in one hand, and promises of a composition in "spot cash" in the other, the lawyer and he succeeded in reducing the claims to manageable proportions; the pawnbroker, himself a little uneasy under the lawyer's searching questions, accepted a compromise. Things could be arranged—at a price.

But the pain of that price to old Sarradet's thrifty soul! To have to subtract from his hoards instead of adding to them, sell stock instead of buying, to count himself so much the poorer instead of so much the richer—the old merchant hated it. It was Marie's task to wring the money out of him. And even when he had been brought to the point of ransoming his son, he ceased not to bewail the prospects of his beloved business.

"I won't leave it to him, I won't," he declared querulously. "I'll leave it to you, Marie."

"Oh, but I couldn't possibly manage the business, Pops," she protested, half in dismay, half laughing at the idea.

"Then you must get a husband who can."

"Never mind my husband just now. There are more pressing things than that."

An idea struck the old fellow. "I'll make it into a company. I'll clip Master Raymond's wings for him!" He pondered over this way of salvation, and, in light of its possibilities, gradually grew a little calmer.

At last the wrench was over, the money paid. It was judged to be safe for father and son to meet. Sidney brought the rescued sinner to Regent's Park. Compunction seized them at the sight of one another; the boy was so pale, shaken, and contrite; the old man was thinner, aged, and feeble. The old tenderness between them revived; each tried to console the other. Quite resolved to protect his business, Mr. Sarradet consented to forgive his son. Humbled to his soul, Raymond asked no more than to be received back into favour on any terms. Marie and Sidney stood by, helping, favouring, and exchanging glances of self-congratulation.

"I'm off for my holiday to-morrow, Mr. Sarradet," Sidney announced.

The old man looked up in sudden alarm. It was as if the anchor announced to the ship that it proposed to take a holiday.

"No, no, that's all right! I'm going for a walking tour in Wales, and Raymond's coming with me. Twenty miles a day, open air all day! Three weeks of that, and he'll be as right as rain, and ready to tackle his work like a Hercules!"

This clever fellow had a plan to meet every emergency! Surely he would have a plan to save the beloved business too? Mr. Sarradet determined to consult him about it when he came back from Wales. Meanwhile he grew much more cheerful, and even went so far as to indulge in some hints of a giddy youth of his own—hints based (in cold truth be it said) on a very slender foundation, but showing a desire to make excuses for his son.

"Yes, and your bit of fun didn't do you any harm, Mr. Sarradet, did it?" asked Sidney.

No more had his bit—though quite a large bit—done Sidney harm. There was reason then to hope that even Raymond's formidable bit might not in the end do Raymond any harm. He might turn out as good a man of business as his father yet. Still no risks should be run. The old gentleman hugged the idea of his company—and he had someone in his eye for Managing Director.

So with skill and courage, with good heart and kindliness, with ambition and cunning, Sidney Barslow bound the Sarradet family to his chariot wheels. He was the friend-in-need, the rescuer, the saviour. He was like to become the sheet-anchor, the arbiter, the referee. Between father and son—her weak old man and her weaker young one—Marie could not carry the whole load herself. She was strong and self-reliant, but she was not strong enough for that. She too would take the strong man's orders, though she might take them with a smile, when what had been and what might have been came to her remembrance.

He gave her an order now, when they said good night.

"Look here, when I bring him back from Wales, you mustn't let him mope or be bored. If I were you, I'd get Amabel to come and stay here a bit."

"Really you think of everything," she told him in a merry wonder. "I'll ask her, of course."

"I think of a good many things," he said, venturing a bold glance in her eyes.

"Don't think of too many at a time, Sidney," she warned him with a smile.

"No, no, each in its proper place! One done, t'other come on, you know!"

He stood looking down on her with a jovial confident smile—and she liked it. His bold glance of admiration did not displease or alarm her. She was quite ready to be told what the glance said; but she was not ready to say anything in reply yet. But it was evident that some day she would be asked for a reply.

And it seemed evident too in what direction the current of her life was setting. With a smile for this and a sigh for that, and a wrinkle of the brow over this-and-that, she went back to the drawing-room and gave old Sarradet his gin-and-water.