When I read that five years before she wrote this book, E. H. Young ran off with a married man, I had to wonder how much of it was autobiographical. Not that that’s exactly what happens in The Misses Mallett, but you’ll understand why I say this if you read it.
As a young woman, Rose Mallett rejects the proposal of Francis Sales. He is handsome, but she thinks he is sulky and boyish. And he is. Rose lives with her much older half sisters, whom she remembers thinking as a girl were like princesses. Now perhaps they are a little comic, but Rose doesn’t see them that way. Both are meticulously dressed in a style of twenty years before. Caroline, who likes to present a roguish effect but knows nothing about what she suggests, can be magnificent, while Sophia still looks girlish. Rose herself is beautiful in a cool, collected way, and dresses with a stylish severity.
Francis Sales goes away to Canada to learn farming and in a few years comes home with a wife, Christabel. Although Christabel says she wants to be friends, it’s clear she has some idea of Rose that is mistaken. Soon Christabel, in trying to prove her gameness at horse riding when she is actually afraid of horses, is badly injured so that she is a permanent invalid. For this incident she believes Rose had a part she did not play. Still, Rose begins a relationship with Francis that is not an affair but is more than a friendship.
When Rose is about thirty, the sisters’ niece Henrietta comes to live with them. Although the sisters never saw their brother Reginald unless he needed money, they still loved him. He has died, followed shortly by his widow, who rejected their money even though she and Henrietta were living in poverty, Henrietta having kept their lodgings by taking up the cooking for the whole house. When her mother dies, the sisters send for her.
Unfortunately, one of the first people Henrietta sees when she arrives is Francis Sales, who presents a romantic exterior riding his horse. She soon divines that Rose has a relationship with him even though they have lately broken up, and decides she will have him herself. As can be predicted, he’s not hard to get.
Because Henrietta sees Rose as a rival, she doesn’t understand the things Rose does for her. Rose has her flaws, but she isn’t the woman Christabel or Henrietta think she is. It is this misunderstanding that powers the plot of the novel.
I find Young fascinating. Her novels are not at all what I expect for her time, so early in the 20th century (this one is from 1922). Her heroines are complex and interesting. I have no idea what either of the heroines in this book see in Francis Sales, though.
whatmeread 
I read this 12 years ago and have a tiny review typical of that period of my blog! https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/e-h-young-the-misses-mallett/ I do like Young: you’re right, she is complex.