Wildly enjoyable Victorian melodrama about three women: Hester the author, living with her appalling clergyman brother, Rachel who's done the rags to riches thing and had a painful love affair, and Lady Newhaven, whose adultery sets the plot in motion. Rollicking good melodramatic fun with people behaving appallingly and lots of thundering morality (not all conventional). If you like that kind of thing, you'll love it.