He was quite as cool and clear-headed and business-like, and as well able to "tot up" any given figures upon the back of an envelope after one of those diplomatic little Greenwich dinners as he was the first thing after breakfast.

It had been an easy thing to tyrannise over poor Tom Halliday; but this man was a grave inscrutable creature, a domestic enigma which Georgy was always giving up in despair.

But so completely did Mr.Sheldon rule his wife, that when he informed her inferentially that she was a very happy woman, she accepted his view of the subject, and was content to believe herself blest.
In spite of those occasional grumblings to servants and female friends, Mrs.Sheldon did think herself happy.

Those occasional complaints were the minor notes in the harmony of her life, and only served to make the harmony complete.

She read her novels, and fed a colony of little feeble twittering birds that occupied a big wire cage in the breakfast-parlour.