'Over the water,' answered Omobono, with perfect confidence. 'You may have the two for four-and-twenty ducats,' said Rustan. 'But you cannot expect me to take anything off the price of the Kokóna,' he added. 'I bargained with your master, and he agreed.' 'No, no! Certainly! And I thank you, sir.' 'I suppose,' said Rustan, 'that you would do as much for me.' 'Of course, of course,' answered Omobono. 'Shall we count the ducats?' When the operation was almost finished, the negress returned with the two slave-girls, whose commonplace features were wreathed in smiles, and they began to kiss the hem of Zoë's cloak. Omobono inspected them critically. 'Are you pleased with them, Kokóna?' he enquired of Zoë. 'My master is very anxious that you should be satisfied.' 'Indeed I am,' Zoë answered readily. 'They are very clever little maids.' The two were almost crying with delight, and only a meaning movement of the negress's hand to her girdle checked them. They were not out of her power yet. Omobono eyed them, and really thought them cheap at twelve ducats each, as indeed they were. He was paying four hundred for Zoë, but Rustan did not mean her to see the gold, and had covered it with one of his loose sleeves as she entered. He now begged his wife take the three slaves to the palanquins while he finished counting and weighing, and wrote out his receipt for the money. He called the negress his pet mouse, his little bird, and the down-quilted waistcoat of his heart, and but for her terrific appearance, and the weapon she carried in her girdle, Omobono would have laughed outright. Rustan wrote on a strip of parchment, in bad Greek:-- In the name of the Holy Trinity, Constantinople, the Saturday before Passion Sunday, the second year of Andronicus Augustus Cæsar, and the fourteenth of the Indiction, I have received from the Most Magnificent Carlo Zeno, a Venetian, the sum of four hundred and forty gold ducats of Venice, for the following merchandise:-- For one Greek maid slave, slave-born, between seventeen and eighteen years old, answering to the name of Arethusa, without blemish, scar, or birthmark, having natural brown hair, brown eyes, twenty-eight teeth all sound, weighing two Attic talents and five minæ more or less, and speaking Greek, Latin, and Italian Ducats 400