Frankenstein

symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the
worst event. On her death-bed the fortitude and benignity of this best
of women did not desert her. She joined the hands of Elizabeth and
myself:--"My children," she said, "my firmest hopes of future happiness
were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be
the consolation of your father. Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my
place to my younger children. Alas! I regret that I am taken from you;
and, happy and beloved as I have been, is it not hard to quit you all?
But these are not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavour to resign
myself cheerfully to death, and will indulge a hope of meeting you in
another world."

She died calmly; and her countenance expressed affection even in death.
I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by
that most irreparable evil; the void that presents itself to the soul;
and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long
before the mind can persuade itself that she, whom we saw every day, and
whose very existence appeared a part of our own, can have departed for
ever--that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished,