Sylvia Robson is a beautiful young woman living on a farm in Yorkshire at the end of the 18th century. Many love and are loved by her, most importantly: her parents; their farmhand Kester; her cousin Philip Robson, a shopkeeper in the nearby town of Monkshaven whom Silvia marries; and Charley Kinraid, a whaling harpooner to whom Silvia is secretly engaged before he is pressed into the British navy and mysteriously disappears. The course of true love does not run smooth for Silvia and those who love her. But in the end all find at least some degree of peace.