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Transcriber's Note:

  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
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ARETHUSA




  [Illustration: ARETHUSA]




     ARETHUSA

     BY
     F. MARION CRAWFORD

     AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "A LADY OF ROME,"
     ETC., ETC.

     _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
     GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND_

     New York
     THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
     LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
     1907

     _All rights reserved_




     COPYRIGHT, 1906, 1907,
     BY THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING CO.

     COPYRIGHT, 1907,
     BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.

     Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1907.

     Norwood Press
     J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
     Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.




     THE STORY-TELLER OF THE BAZAAR
     DEDICATES
     THIS TALE OF CONSTANTINOPLE
     TO HIS DEAR DAUGHTER
     ELEANOR




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


     Arethusa                                           _Frontispiece_

                                                           FACING PAGE

     He was talking with an old beggar woman                        30

     She tenderly kissed the wrinkled face                          44

     'Yes,' replied the negress. 'Rustan is very affectionate. He
     says that I am his Zoe, his "life," because he would surely
     die of starvation without me!'                                 66

     'Tell me your story,' he said in a lower tone. 'Do not be afraid!
     no one shall hurt you.'                                        88

     'Forty ducats!' cried Omobono, casting up his eyes, and preparing
     to bargain for at least half an hour                           94

     All sorts of confused thoughts crowded her brain, as Zeno sat
     down on a seat beside the divan                               108

     There was something so oddly fixed in his look and so dull in his
     voice that Omobono began to fear that he might be a lunatic   128

     'I know them,' Zoe answered. 'If I am not telling you the
     truth, sell me in the market to-morrow.'                      164

     'I did not mean to love you!'                                 194

     The captain's wife obeyed, less frightened than she had been at
     first                                                         218

     Saw her sink down there exhausted, and draw a heavy silk shawl
     across her body                                               240

     'Tell me what you see,' she said to the maids                 262

     'Yes!' roared the Tartar. 'Ten thousand ducats! And if I do
     not find the money in the house, you two must find it in
     yours! Do you understand?'                                    274

     Then, all at once, he felt that she had received one of those
     inspirations of the practical sense which visit women who
     are driven to extremities                                     310

     'Am I not your bought slave?' she asked. 'I must obey.'       352




CHAPTER I


Carlo Zeno, gentleman of Venice, ex-clerk, ex-gambler, ex-soldier of
fortune, ex-lay prebendary of Patras, ex-duellist, and ex-Greek
general, being about twenty-nine years of age, and having in his tough
body the scars of half-a-dozen wounds that would have killed an
ordinary man, had resolved to turn over a new leaf, had become a
merchant, and was established in Constantinople in the year 1376.

He had bought a house in the city itself because the merchants of
Genoa all dwelt in the town of Pera, on the other side of the Golden
Horn. A Venetian could not have lived in the same place with Genoese,
for the air would have poisoned him, to a certainty; and besides, the
sight of a Genoese face, the sound of the Genoese dialect, the smell
of Genoese cookery, were all equally sickening to any one brought up
in the lagoons. Genoa was not fit to be mentioned within hearing of
polite Venetian ears, its very name was unspeakable by decent Venetian
lips; and even to pronounce the syllables for purposes of business was
horribly unlucky.

Therefore Carlo Zeno and his friends had taken up their abode in the
old city, amongst the Greeks and the Bokharians, the Jews and the
Circassians, and they left the Genoese to themselves in Pera,
pretending that they