But our gentle clerk did not consider these duties imposed upon her by her father as excluding her either from gratifying her love of domestic habits by assisting her mother in what at that time was denominated hussyskep or housekeeping, or from a certain other gratification, which might without a hint from us be anticipated--no other than the luxury of falling head and ears, and heart too we fancy, in love with a certain dashing young student of the name of Robert Stormonth, then attending the University more for the sake of polish than of mere study; for he was the son of the proprietor of Kelton, and required to follow no profession. How Effie got entangled with this youth we have no means of knowing, so we must be contented with the Scotch proverb-- “Tell me where the flea may bite, And I will tell where love may light.” 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 smitting 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 intrusted 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 thoroughgoing 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, shrunk 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.