THE MISTRESS IN THE HOUSEMrs Finbridge was the woman behind her husband.
She stood behind him like the white paper behind a silhouette. When he sat as chairman on the Bench of Magistrates or made the main speech of the evening at the Minstree Conservative meeting, or whipped up his hounds as they gathered beneath the fine stone façade of his mansion, his handsome angular figure was strengthened, made solid as it were, by the knowledge, shared by all beholders, that somewhere near at hand was that round, untidy, boundlessly energetic little woman.
The establishment, with its staff of fourteen, emancipated, half-educated men and women—butler, cook, two gardeners, two grooms, six maids, knife-boy and laundry-woman—ran with that smooth precision which was an ideal only in the days when domes
