The probability is, that from the difference of their stations and the retiring nature of our gentle clerk, we shall be safe in assuming that he had, as the saying goes, been smitten by her charms in some of those street encounters, where there is more of love’s work done than in “black-footed” tea coteries expressly held for the accommodation of Cupid.  And that the smiting was a genuine feeling we are not left to doubt; for in addition to the reasons we shall afterwards have too good occasion to know, he treated Effie not as those wild students who are great men’s sons do “the light o’ loves” they meet in their escapades, for he entrusted his secrets to her, he took such small counsel from her poor head as a “learned clerk” might be supposed able to give; nay, he told her of his mother, and how one day he hoped to be able to introduce her at Kelton as his wife.  All which Effie repaid with the devotedness of that most wonderful affection called the first or virgin love—­the purest, the deepest, the most thorough-going of all the emotions of the human heart.  But as yet he had not conceded to her wish that he should consent to their love being made known to Effie’s father and mother.  Love is only a leveller to itself and its object:  the high-born youth, inured to refined manners, shrank from a family intercourse, which put him too much in mind of the revolt he had made against the presumed wishes and intentions of his proud parents.  Wherein, after all, he was only true to the instincts of that institution, apparently so inhumane as well as unchristian in its exclusiveness, called aristocracy, and yet with the excuse that its roots are pretty deeply set in human nature.

But, proud as he was, Bob Stormonth, the younger of Kelton, was amenable to the obligations of a necessity, forged by his own imprudent hands.  He had, by a fast mode of living, got into debt—­a condition from which his father, a stern man, had relieved him twice before, but with a threat on the last occasion, that if he persevered in his prodigality, he would withdraw from him his yearly allowance, and throw him upon his own resources.  The threat proved ineffectual, and this young heir of entail, with all his pride, was once in the grasp of low-born creditors; nay, things in this evil direction had gone so far that writs were out against him, and one in the form of a caption was already in the hands of a messenger-at-arms.  That the debts were comparatively small in amount, was no amelioration where the purse was all but empty; and he had exhausted the limited exchequers of his chums, which with college youths was, and is, not difficult to do.  So the gay Bob was driven to his last shift, and that, as is generally the case, was a mean one; for necessity, as the mother of inventions, does not think it proper to limit her births to genteel or noble devices to please her proud consort.  He even had recourse to poor Effie to help him; and, however ridiculous this may seem, there were reasons that made the application appear not so desperate as some of his other schemes.  It was only the caption that as yet quickened his fears; and as the sum for which the writ was issued was only twenty pounds, it was not, after all, so much beyond the power of a clerk.