chunk: The story is narrated by George Cranleigh, a younger son of Lord Harold Cranleigh, a destitute landowner in Surrey, who has been ruined, according to Blackmore, by the "farce of Free-trade."
  In the opening chapter George, riding home from market, surprises a maiden of surpassing beauty upon her knees in a ruined chapel. She proves to be Dariel, the daughter of Sur Imar, a prince of the Lesghians, a wild tribe of the Caucasus. A blood feud has arisen between Imar and his sister, and so he has, with his daughter, his foster-brother Stepan, and a body of retainers, come to England and settled peaceably in a deserted house in Surrey.