"What! weeping!" exclaimed Valeria. "Are you sorry then?"
"Nay, they are tears of joy," exclaimed the girl, smiling through her tears, like the sun shining through a shower; "not that I tire of thy service; I wish never to leave it. But I rejoice that my father's daughter can serve thee no longer as thy slave, but as thy freedwoman."
"I should indeed be sorry to lose thee," said the august lady with a wistful smile. "If I thought I should, I would almost regret thy manumission; for believe me, Callirhoë, I have need of true friends, and thou, I think, wilt be a faithful one."
"What! I, but this moment a poor slave, the friend of the fairest and most envied lady in all Rome! Nay, now thou laughest at me; but believe me I am still heart and soul and body thy most devoted servant."
"I do believe it, child," said the Empress; "but tell me, pray, why thou speakest in that proud melancholy tone of thy father? Was he a freedman?"
"Nay, your Majesty, he was free-born; neither he nor his fathers were ever in bondage to any man,"—and the fair face of the girl was suffused with the glow of honest pride in the freeborn blood that flowed in her veins.
"Forgive me, child, if I touched a sore spot in thy memory. Perchance I may heal it. Money can do much, men say."
"In this case, dearest mistress, it is powerless. But from thee I can have no secrets, if you care to listen to the story of one so long a slave."
"I never knew thou wert aught else, child. My steward bought thee in the slave market in the Suburra. Tell me all."
"'Tis a short story, but a sad one, your Majesty," said the girl, as she went on braiding her mistress's hair. "My father was a Hebrew merchant, a dealer in precious stones, well esteemed in his nation. He lived in Damascus, where I was born. He named me after the beautiful fountain near the Jordan of his native land."