or
another, and there was obvious design in the absence of an envelope. But
Rachel was not yet in the secret, and she was determined not to wait an
hour longer than she need.

"What is the time, please?"

"I will see, madame."

The girl glided out and in.

"Well?"

"A quarter to ten, madame."

"Then order my breakfast for a quarter past, and let Mr. Steele be told
that I shall be delighted to see him at eleven o'clock."

CHAPTER VII

A MORNING CALL

"The way to conceal one's identity," observed Mrs. Steel, "is to assume
another as distinctive as one's own."

This oracular utterance was confidentially delivered from the leathern
chair at the writing-table, in an inner recess of Rachel's sumptuous
sitting-room. The chair had been wheeled aloof from the table, on which
were Steel's hat and gloves, and such a sheaf of book-stall literature
as suggested his immediate departure upon no short journey, unless,
indeed, the magazines and the Sunday newspapers turned out to be another
offering to Mrs. Minchin, like the nosegay of hothouse flowers which she
still held in her hand. Rachel herself had inadvertently taken the very
easy-chair which was a further feature of the recess; in its cushioned
depths she already felt at a needless disadvantage, with Mr. Steel
bending over her, his strong face bearing down, as it were, upon hers,
and his black eyes riddling her with penetrating glances. But to have
risen now would have been to show him what she felt. So she trifled with
his flowers without looking up, though her eyebrows rose a little on
their own account.

"I know what you are thinking," resumed Steel; "that you had no desire
to assume any new identity, or for a single moment to conceal your own,
and that I have taken a great deal upon myself. That I most freely
admit. And I think you will forgive me when you see the papers!"

"Is there so much about me, then?" asked Rachel, with a sigh of
apprehension.

"A leading article in every one of them. But they will keep. Indeed, I
would much rather you never saw them at all."

"Was that why you brought them in, Mr. Steel?"

The question was irresistible, its satire unconcealed; but Steel's
disregard of it steered admirably clear of contempt.

"That was why I bought them, certainly," he admitted. "But I brought
them with me for quite a different purpose, for which one would indeed
have been enough. I was saying, however, that the best way to sink one's
id