A Young Man's Year by Antonio Hope

It was not given to Arthur again to hear his mother's voice or to see her alive. A few days after the first round of the protracted battle over the great case had ended in his favour, just before the close of the legal term, news reached him of her death. She had been suffering from a chill and had taken to her bed, but no immediate danger was anticipated. She had read with keen pleasure Arthur's letters, full now of a new zest for his work and a new confidence. She breathed her gentle _Nunc Dimittis_; her daughter's future was happily arranged, her son's now opened before him. In simple and ardent faith her eyes turned to another world. As though in answer to an appeal instinctively issuing from her own soul, the end came very quickly. The tired heart could bear no added strain. After making her comfortable for the night, Anna had gone downstairs to eat her own supper; when she came up again, all was over. There was no sign of movement, no look of shock or pain; her eyes were closed. It seemed that sleeping she had fallen asleep, and her peaceful spirit found in an instant the eternal peace of its faithful aspiration.

Here was no place for the bitterness of grief. Death brought a quickened sense of unity and love, and the lost mother joined her children's hands in a renewal of childhood's affection and of sweet old memories. "Peace I leave with you," Anna whispered to Arthur as they stood beside the grave, and he felt that she divined truly the legacy which their mother would have chosen, before all others, to bequeath to them.