Her Forbidden Knight Read Online Free

Knowlton appeared to be educated, well informed, and a good fellow. He also possessed an indefinable air of good breeding—lacking in the others.
    Driscoll proposed a game of billiards.
    “You’re on,” the others agreed.
    “As for me,” said Knowlton. “I’ll be with you in a minute. Want to send a telegram.”
    They nodded and proceeded to the billiard room, while Knowlton approached Lila’s desk.
    Lila was reading a book, and handed him a pad of blanks absently, without looking up; and when he pushed the telegram across the counter she took it and counted the words, still without looking at him. It was signed “John Knowlton.”
    “Eighty cents, please,” said Lila.
    As she raised her head and met the eyes of the stranger she was conscious of a distinct and undeniable shock.
    Why, she could not have told. There was nothing alarming in the young man’s appearance; he had a very ordinary face and figure, though the former was marked by an unusually genial and pleasing pair of gray eyes, and bore an expression of uncommon frank good nature. Lila, feeling that she was staring at him, flushed and turned aside, and the gray eyes twinkled with an amused smile as their owner took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and held it out to her.
    “Is this the smallest you have?” asked Lila, opening the cash drawer.
    “I believe it is,” said Knowlton. “Sorry; but you see, being a millionaire, I never care to be bothered with anything smaller. Can you make it?”
    Lila examined the contents of the drawer.
    “If you’ll take some silver.”
    “Anything,” Knowlton smiled.
    Lila handed him his change.
    “You will send it at once?” asked Knowlton.
    She nodded. Knowlton appeared to be in no hurry to leave.
    “I suppose that since my business is over I should make my bow and depart,” he said finally. “But I like to talk and I hate billiards.”
    “Then why do you play?” Lila asked.
    “Why? Oh, why do we do anything? I suppose merely to kill time.”
    “But that is wrong. A man ought to do something—something worth while. He should never want to kill time, but to use it.”
    “A sermon?” Knowlton smiled.
    “I beg your pardon,” said Lila, coloring.
    “But I was joking.”
    “I know—of course—and it was very silly of me. Only I do believe that what I said is true. I have always wished to be a man.”
    “Motion denied,” said Knowlton.
    “And that means?”
    “That it is impossible. That is to say, my guess is that you are thoroughly a woman. Am I right?”
    “Do I look so old?”
    “Oh, I didn’t mean that! Then we’ll say girl. You are—let’s see—nineteen.”
    “Twenty,” Lila declared.
    “Well, that leaves one for safety. It really wasn’t a bad guess. It’s always best to—”
    “Are you coming, Knowlton?” came a voice.
    Billy Sherman was standing in the hall leading to the billiard room, regarding them with a sinister frown.
    “Right away,” Knowlton answered. “Didn’t know you were waiting.”
    He lifted his hat to Lila and joined Sherman. The two disappeared within.
    Lila began humming a tune softly under her breath. She picked up her book and turned to the page she had marked, then suddenly let it fall to the desk, gasping with amazement. She had been conversing familiarly, even intimately, with a man she had never before seen—an utter stranger! And at first she had not even realized it! What had she been thinking of? It was incredible.
    “Of course,” she thought, “there was really nothing wrong about it. I suppose I am silly. And yet—how did it happen? He is certainly different from other men. And, oh, what will he think of me? I hope he will understand that I don’t talk to everybody.”
    Again she picked up the book and tried to read, but the printed words were blurred and meaningless to her eyes. She was saying to herself over and over: “I wonder what he is thinking of me?”
    The truth is, that just at that moment Knowlton was not only thinking of