Apart from the family in Peddie’s Land, and in no manner connected with it, either by blood or favour, was that of Mr Archibald Blair, a young man living in Writers’ Court, of whom we can say little more than that he was connected with the Borgue family in the Stewartry, an advocate, and also married. We are not informed of either the name or lineage of his young wife, and far less can we say aught of the perfections or imperfections she derived from nature. We are only left to presume that if there had been no love, there would probably have been no marriage, and in this case, also, we have the fact of a child having been born to help the presumption of that which, naturally enough, may be taken as granted. The two families, far asunder in point of grade, and equally far from any chance of acquaintanceship, went on in their several walks; nor are we entitled to say, from anything previously known of them, that they even knew of each other’s existence--unless, to be sure, the reputation of Julia for her personal perfections might have come to Blair’s ears as it did to many who had perhaps never seen her; but, then, the marriage of a beauty is generally the end of her fame, as it is of her maiden career; and those who, before that event, are entitled to look and admire, and, perhaps, wish to whisper their aspirations, not less than to gaze on her beauty, leave the fair one to the happy man to whom the gods have assigned her. We must now allow four years to have passed, during all which time Patrick Halliday and his wife--still, we presume, retaining her beauty, at least in the matronly form--were happy as the day is long, or, rather we should say, as the day is short, for night is more propitious to love than day. Nothing was known to have occurred to break the harmony which had begun in love, and surely when we have, as there appeared to be here, the three requisites of happiness mentioned by the ancients--health, beauty, and wealth, there was no room for any suspicion that the good deities repented of their gifts. But all this only tended to deepen the shadows of a mystery which we are about to revive at this late period.