o 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."

"What is his name?" asked the judge, with a persistence very uncommon in
him.

Philip Alston turned now and glanced at him with an e