As the infuriated creature finished these words, she spat on the poor victim of her hatred, now unable even to reply to her dreadful expressions of a morbid thirst for revenge. Having thus gratified her passion, she disappeared among the woods. Ashley lay for a considerable time, before assistance came to him. His feelings may be conceived—they cannot be expressed. His conscience was enough for him, without the exhibition of so deadly a hatred in her whom he now pitied. The reaction of injured virtue overcame him. He groaned in the depth of his agony; burning tears of remorse flowed down his cheeks; the pains and penalties of vice stung him in mind and body, with the malignity of demons; he would have given the proud domains of his forefathers, for one drop of mercy to his burning soul. He tried to pray; he was unable. The fiends still clung to him. The Almighty did not think it time to pluck them away. In his struggles, he fainted, and lay on the cold earth for several hours. The servants of the Castle came out to seek their master. They searched the woods, and found the horse which had strayed away from him. His groans attracted their notice; and, in the plight we have described, they found their unhappy lord. When taken home, he was put to bed, where he lay for some months. The aids of ministers of religion afforded him consolation, but were ineffectual in banishing the presentiment which had taken so firm a hold of his imagination. They recommended to him travel; and he consented to remove to France, where the change of scene might produce its accustomed effects, in withdrawing his mind from the contemplation of a subject which preyed on his vitals. Arrangements were made for the journey, and everything was ready for his departure; but the journey which was destined for the unhappy victim of his own crimes, was of a different kind from that he had in view. On the day on which he was to depart, he was seized with a hæmorrhage from the lungs, and died before any medical advice could be afforded him. In a moonlight night, some weeks after the interment, Mary Lee stood upon the grave of Robert Ashley.