A Young Man's Year by Antonio Hope

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.