It was during one of their ordinary walks in the Meadows that the pressing necessity was opened by Stormonth to the vexed and terrified girl.  He told her that, but for the small help he required in the meantime, he would be ruined.  The wrath of his father would be excited once more, and probably to the exclusion of all reconciliation; and he himself compelled to flee, but whither he knew not.  He had his plan prepared, and proposed to Effie, who had no means of her own, to take a loan of the sum out of her father’s cash-box—­words very properly chosen according to the euphemistic policy of the devil; but Effie’s genuine spirit was roused and alarmed.

“Dreadful!” she whispered, as if afraid that the night wind would carry her words to honest ears.  “Besides,” she continued, “my father, who is a hard man, keeps his desk lockit.”

Words which took Stormonth aback, for even he saw there was here a necessity as strong as his own; yet the power of invention went to work again.

“Listen, Effie,” said he.  “If you cannot help me, it is not likely we shall meet again.  I am desperate, and will go into the army.”

The ear of Effie was chained to a force which was direct upon the heart.  She trembled and looked wistfully into his face, even as if by that look she could extract from him some other device less fearful, by which she might have the power of retaining him for so short a period as a day.

“You draw out your father’s drafts on the bank, Effie,” he continued.  “Write one out for me, and I will put your father’s name to it.  You can draw the money.  I will be saved from ruin; and your father will never know.”

A proposal which again brought a shudder over the girl.

“Is it Robert Stormonth who asks me to do this thing?” she whispered again.

“No,” said he; “for I am not myself.  Yesterday, and before the messenger was after me, I would have shrunk from the suggestion.  I am not myself, I say, Effie.  Ay or no; keep me or lose me—­that is the alternative.”

“Oh, I cannot,” was the language of her innocence, and for which he was prepared; for the stimulant was again applied in the most powerful of all forms—­the word farewell was sounded in her ear.

“Stop, Robert! let me think.”  But there was no thought, only the heart beating wildly.  “I will do it; and may the penalty be mine, and mine only.”

So it was:  “even virtue’s self turns vice when misapplied.”  What her mind shrank from was embraced by the heart as a kind of sacred duty of a love making a sacrifice for the object of its first worship.  It was arranged; and as the firmness of a purpose is often in proportion to the prior disinclination, so Effie’s determination to save her lover from ruin was forthwith put in execution; nay, there was even a touch of the heroine in her, so wonderfully does the heart, acting under its primary instincts, sanctify the device which favours its affection.