Knowing the ladies’ ways, Ruth did not expect them to come.  She was quite satisfied to have the men share her pleasure in the presents.  They were looking at her and not at the gifts lying heaped on the candle-stand, but she did not notice that.  She gave the judge a priceless piece of lace to hold.  He took it with the awkward, helpless embarrassment of a manly man handling a woman’s delicate belongings,—­the awkwardness that goes straight to a woman’s heart, because she sees and feels its true reverence—­a reverence just as plain and just as sweet to the simplest country girl as to the wisest woman of the world.  The perception of it is a matter of intuition, not one of experience.  The least experienced woman instantly distrusts the man who can touch her garments with ease or composure.  Ruth’s gay young voice broke into a sweet chime of delighted laughter when the judge seized the airy bit of lace as if it had been the heaviest and hottest of crowbars.  She laughed again when she looked at his face.  He had an odd trick of lifting one of his eyebrows very high and at an acute angle when perplexed or ill at ease.  This eccentric left eyebrow—­now quite wedge-shaped—­had gone up almost to the edge of his tousled gray hair.  Ruth patted his great clumsy hands with her little deft ones.

“Well, I’ll have to take to the woods, if there’s no other way of escape,” said the judge, making his greatest threat.

“You dear!” she said, running her arm through his and giving it a little squeeze.  “That’s right.  Hold it tight—­be careful, or it will break.  Here, William,” piling the young man’s arms full of delicately tinted gauze, “this is a sunset cloud.  And these,” casting lengths of exquisite tissue over the boy’s shoulder, “these are the mists of the dawn, David,—­all silvery white and golden rose and jewelled blue.  But—­oh! oh!—­these are the loveliest of all!  A pair of slippers in orange-blossom kid, spangled with silver!  Look at them!  Just look, everybody!”

Holding them in her hand she ran round the table again to throw her arms about Philip Alston’s neck the second time, like a happy, excited child.  The little white slippers went up with her arms and touched his cheek.  And then he drew them down, and clasping her slender wrists, held her out before him and looked at her with fond, smiling eyes.

“I don’t believe that the Empress Josephine has any prettier slippers than those,” he said.  “I ordered the prettiest and the finest in Paris.”

“Who fetched all these things?” the judge broke in, with something like a sudden realization of the number and the value of the gifts.

“Oh, a friend of mine,” responded Philip Alston, carelessly, and without turning his head,—­“a friend who has many ships constantly going and coming between New Orleans and France.  He orders anything I wish; and when it comes to him, he sends it on to me by the first flatboat cordelled up the river.”