She had been sold herself, when she was thirteen.
'Of course,' she added, 'the handsome ones were kept apart from us and were better fed before they were sold, but we waited on them—we whom no one would buy except to make us work—and so we saw them every day.'
'He says he will give a hundred Venetian ducats for me, does he not?'
'Yes; and you are worth three hundred anywhere,' answered the old slave, and the tears came to her eyes, though she tried to squeeze them back with her crooked fingers.
The sick woman called to the two in a weak voice. Zoë was at her side instantly, and Nectaria shuffled as fast as she could to the pan of coals and crouched down to blow upon the embers in order to warm some milk.
'I am cold,' complained the sufferer, 'so cold!'
Zoë found one of her hands and began to chafe it gently between her own.
'It is like ice,' she said.
The girl was ill-clothed enough, as it was, and the early spring night was chilly; but she slipped off her ragged outer garment, the long-skirted coat of the Greeks, and spread it over the other wretched coverings of the bed, tucking it in round her mother's neck.
'But you, child?' protested the sick woman feebly.