One day, when Patrick Halliday returned from a journey to Carlisle, he was thunderstruck by the intelligence communicated to him by his servant, that his wife had disappeared two days before, and no one could tell whither she had gone. The servant, by her own report, had been sent to Leith on a message, and had taken the daughter, little Julia, with her; and when she came back, she found the door unlocked, and her mistress gone. She had made inquiries among the neighbours, she had gone to the acquaintances of the family, she had had recourse to every one and every place where it was likely she would get intelligence of her--all to no effect. Not a single individual could even say so much as that he or she had seen her that day, and at length, wearied out by her inquiries, she had had recourse to the supposition that she had followed her husband to Carlisle. The effect of this strange intelligence was simply stupifying. Halliday dropt into a chair, and, compressing his temples with his trembling hands, seemed to try to retain his consciousness against the echoes of words which threatened to take it away. For a time he had no power of thought, and even when the ideas began again to resume their train, their efforts were broken and wild, tending to nothing but confusion. He put question after question to the servant, every answer throwing him back upon new suppositions, all equally fruitless. The only notion that seemed to give him any relief was, that she had gone to a distance, to some of her friends--wild enough, yet better than blank despair; and as for infidelity, the thought never once occurred to him, where there was no ground on which to rear even a doubt. At length, on regaining something like composure, he rose from his seat, and began to walk drearily through the house. He opened his desk and found that a considerable sum of money he had left there was untouched. He next opened the press in the wall, where she kept her clothes. He could not see anything wanting--the gown was there which latterly she had been in the habit of putting on when she went out to walk with little Julia; her two bonnets, the good and the better--the one for everyday and the one for Sunday--hung upon their pegs. Her jewels, too, which were in a drawer of her cabinet, were all there, with the exception of the marriage-ring she was in the habit of wearing every day. There was nothing wanting, save her ordinary body clothes, including the fringed yellow wrapper in which, during the forenoon, she used to perform her domestic duties, and which he had often thought became her better than even her silks. Wherever she had gone, she must have departed in her undress and bareheaded--nay, her slippers must have been on her feet, for not only were they away, but the high-heeled shoes by which she replaced them when she went to walk were in the place where they usually lay.