Gypsy's Cousin Joy by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

They were all together in the parlor at Yorkbury -- Joy very still, with her head in her auntie's lap. It was two weeks now since that night when she sat writing in her journal at Washington, and planning so happily for the trip to Manassas that had never been taken.

They had been able to learn little about her father's death as yet. A Paris paper reported, and Boston papers copied, the statement that an American of his name, stopping at an obscure French town, was missing for two days, and found on the third, murdered, robbed, horribly disfigured. Mr. George Breynton had been traveling alone in the interior of the country, and had written home that he should be in this town -- St. Pierre -- at precisely the time given as the date of the American's death. So his long silence was awfully explained to Joy. The fact that the branch of his firm with which he had frequent business correspondence, had not received the least intelligence of him for several weeks, left no doubt of the mournful truth. Something had gone wrong in the shipping of certain goods, which had required his immediate presence; they had therefore written and telegraphed to him repeatedly, but there had been no reply.