[3] The story follows the adventures of Sir Philip Harclay, who returns to medieval England to find that Arthur Lord Lovel, the friend of his youth, is dead.

By his manifestly superior nature and qualities Edmund had attracted the enmity of his benefactor's nephews, and the coldness of Sir Robert, the eldest son.

In the first, there is the reinforcement of the Gothic narrative framework, one that focuses on expanding the imaginative domain so as to include the supernatural without losing the realism that marks the novel that Walpole pioneered.

The result is that she spurned specific aspects of Walpole's style such as his tendency to incorporate too much humor or comic elements in such a way that it diminishes the Gothic tale's ability to induce fear.

In 1777, Reeve enumerated Walpole's excesses in this respect: "...a sword so large as to require an hundred men to lift it; a helmet that by its own weight forces a passage through a court-yard into an arched vault, big enough for a man to go through; a picture that walks out of its frame; a skeleton ghost in a hermit's cowl..."[7] Reeve declared in her preface her opinion that supernatural tales should be kept within the bounds of reality, contrasting it unfavourably with Otranto.