Rachel felt half frightened and half indignant.  Steel was standing up, looking very earnestly down upon her.  And something that she had dimly divined in the very beginning—­only to chide herself for the mere thought—­that thing was in his face and in his voice.  Rachel made a desperate attempt to change the subject, but, as will be seen, an unlucky one.

“So I am supposed to be your daughter!” she exclaimed nervously.  “May I ask my new name?”

“If you like; but I am going to suggest to you a still newer name, Mrs. Minchin.”

Rachel tried to laugh, though his quietly determined and serious face made it more than difficult.

“Do you mean that I am not to be your daughter any longer, Mr. Steel?”

“Not if I can help it.  But it will depend upon yourself.”

“And what do you want to make me now?”

“My wife!”

CHAPTER VIII

THE DOVE AND THE SERPENT

Rachel was bereft of speech; and yet a certain sense of relief underlay the natural embarrassment caused by a proposal so premature and so abrupt.  Nor was the deeper emotion very difficult to analyze.  Here at last was a logical explanation of the whole behavior of this man; it was the first that had occurred to her, and, after all, it was the only possible one.

“I want you to be my wife,” repeated Mr. Steel, with enough of respect in his tone, yet none the less with the air of a man who is accustomed to obtain what he wants.

And Rachel, looking at the wiry, well-knit, upright figure, and at the fresh, elderly, but virile face, with its sombre eyes and its snowy hair, thought once again of the ancient saw which she had quoted to herself the night before, only to dismiss it finally from her mind.  This man was no fool, nor was he old.  He might be eccentric, but he was eminently sane; he might be elderly, in the arbitrary matter of mere years; but an old man he was not, and never would be with those eyes.

She tried to tell him it was absurd, but before the word could come she saw that it was the last one to apply; he was so confident, so quiet, so sure of himself, if not of Rachel.  At last she told him she could not think of it, he had seen nothing of her, and could not possibly care for her, even supposing that she cared for him.

“By ‘caring,’” said he, “do you mean being ‘in love,’ as they say, and all that?”

“Naturally,” said Rachel, with great ease and irony, but with a new misgiving every moment.

“And have I said I was in love with you?” inquired Mr. Steel, with a smile as indulgent as his tone.  “It might, perhaps, be no more than the truth; but have I had the insolence to tell you so?”

“It is a greater insult if you are not,” returned Rachel, speaking hotly and quickly, but with lowered eyes.

“What!  To offer to marry a person whom one does not—­as yet—­pretend to love?”