The tale tells the story of Stephen Elliott, a young orphan boy, who is invited to stay with his much older cousin, Mr Abney, at a remote country mansion, Aswarby Hall, in Lincolnshire.

His cousin is a reclusive expert on the magico-religious practices of late antiquity who is obsessed with the gaining of occult powers and the acquisition of immortality.

In keeping with the antiquarian interests and considerable personal erudition that this author brings to bear in the settings which he creates for his stories, James provides a considerable amount of background information regarding the field of study of the ruthless and unprincipled classical scholar Mr. Abney - who regards the child murder of orphans as no more than a means to a (black) magical end.

The spring equinox was approaching, as Mr. Abney frequently reminded his cousin, adding that this had been always considered by the ancients to be a critical time for the young: that Stephen would do well to take care of himself, and to shut his bedroom window at night; and that Censorinus had some valuable remarks on the subject……It is recorded of Simon Magus that he was able to fly in the air, to become invisible, or to assume any form he pleased, by the agency of the soul of a boy whom, to use the libellous phrase employed by the author of the Clementine Recognitions, he had "murdered."

"[2] Furthermore (and with particular relevance to the main theme of "Lost Hearts"), the author of the Clementine Recognitions records an episode in which Simon made a familiar spirit for himself by conjuring the soul out of a boy and keeping his image in his bedroom.

"Lost Hearts" was adapted by Robin Chapman in 1973 as part of the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas strand, directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark.

Now curated by the British Film Institute, this version of Lost Hearts has been released on DVD sets with other entries in the strand and in December 2022 on Blu-ray.