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 identity is to assume another, provided that the second be as distinctive as the first.  We will leave for a moment the question of my officiousness in the matter, and we’ll suppose, for the sake of argument, that I was authorized by you to do what in fact I have done.  All last week the papers were literally full of your trial, but on Saturday there was a second sensation as well, and this morning it is hard to say which is first and which second; they both occupy so many columns.  You may not know it, but the Cape liner due on Saturday was lost with scores of lives, off Finisterre, on Friday morning last.”

Rachel failed to see the connection, and yet she felt vaguely that there was one, if she could but recall it; meanwhile she said nothing, but listened with as much attention as a mental search would permit.

“I heard of it first,” continued Steel, “late on Friday afternoon, as I came away from the Old Bailey.  Now, it was on Friday afternoon, if you recollect, that you gave evidence yourself in your own defence.  When you left the witness-box, Mrs. Minchin, and even before you left it, I knew that you were saved!”