In the town of Roxton two women have been rivals since girlhood: Catherine Murchison, big, generous and loved in the slums, and Betty Steel, sleek, clever and jealous, whose husband's practice is set against the doctor Catherine married. Deeping was a physician before he was a novelist, and the medical rivalry — the consultations, the reputations, the patients who move from one brass plate to the other — is exact. The town takes sides, and the ending is a public one.
