“I will not listen to your false promises. Oh, take me home, if you have the least regard for me! I did wrong to come, I know, but take me back before mamma misses me!” entreated Berry, clutching his arm with hysterical energy, tears raining down her pallid cheeks. All at once she had lost faith in him, and his kisses had frightened her with their fervor, as she realized by the light of the words he had spoken the vast distance between their positions: he, the millionaire senator’s son; she, the daughter of the poor tailoress. No, no, he could never stoop to her, she could never drag him down--he was for Rosalind, his equal. As for her, life was over--she loved him so she could never love another, but she must die of her despair. But Charley Bonair kept on laughing at her wild entreaties. “Not yet--not yet!” he cried hilariously, while he urged the bay on, and still onward under the silvery moonlight. “Listen, Berry, I have a clever plan to humiliate Rosalind and cause her to break the engagement so that I may marry you: I shall take you back to the lawn fête, and dance with you there as my guest, with Rosalind and my haughty sisters. Oh, how angry they will be! If they order you to leave I shall defy them, and we will dance on and on, and Rosalind will be furious, vowing she will never speak to me again. How do you like my plan? Will you come with me back to the hall now?” “Oh, never, never!” cried Berry, shrinking in horror from his sensational proposition, frightened, eager to escape. “You shall!” laughed Bonair abruptly, turning his horse’s head to return. “I will not!” she shrieked indignantly, and rose to her feet, reckless with despair. The next moment, to his horror, she sprang over the wheel, out into the rocky road, before he could lift a hand to prevent her. CHAPTER V. THE TURNING POINT. As long as he lived, Charley Bonair would never forget that tragic moment. All at once, the fumes of wine passed from his brain, and left him sober and horrified, the heart sinking like lead in his breast. It flashed over his mind that Berry’s wild leap for liberty, made just as he turned the vehicle around, could hardly fail to result in her instant death on the rough and rocky road. A loud groan escaped his blanched lips, and he drew the frightened horse swiftly back upon its haunches that he might spring out to go to her assistance. But the spirited animal, frightened out of all reason by Berry’s leap, and his master’s wild cry of alarm, now spurned control, and darted forward at headlong speed, dragging the lines from Bonair’s hands, so that the light trap rocked so wildly from side to side he could barely keep his seat by clinging to the edges.