ned away; and the corregidor was too much occupied in
assisting her to ask the gitana for his daughter. "Good woman, angel
rather than gitana," cried the lady when she came to herself, "where is
the owner of these baubles?"

"Where, senora?" was the reply. "She is in your own house. That young
gipsy who drew tears from your eyes is their owner, and is indubitably
your own daughter, whom I stole from your house in Madrid on the day and
hour named in this paper."

On hearing this, the agitated lady threw off her clogs, and rushed with
open arms into the sala, where she found Preciosa surrounded by her
doncellas and servants, and still weeping and wailing. Without a word
she caught her hurriedly in her arms, and examined if she had under her
left breast a mark in the shape of a little white mole with which she
was born, and she found it there enlarged by time. Then, with the same
haste, she took off the girl's shoe, uncovered a snowy foot, smooth as
polished marble, and found what she sought; for the two smaller toes of
the right foot were joined together by a thin membrane, which the tender
parents could not bring themselves to let the surgeon cut when she was
an infant. The mole on the bosom, the foot, the trinkets, the day
assigned for the kidnapping, the confession of the gitana, and the joy
and emotion which her parents felt when they first beheld her, confirmed
with the voice of truth in the corregidora's soul that Preciosa was her
own daughter: clasping her therefore in her arms, she returned with her
to the room where she had left the corregidor and the old gipsy.
Preciosa was bewildered, not knowing why she had made all those
investigations, and was still more surprised when the lady raised her in
her arms, and gave her not one kiss, but a hundred.

Dona Guiomar at last appeared with her precious burthen in her husband's
presence, and transferring the maiden from her own arms to his,
"Receive, Senor, your daughter Constanza," she said; "for your daughter
she is without any doubt, since I have seen the marks on the foot and
the bosom; and stronger even than these proofs is the voice of my own
heart ever since I set eyes on her."

"I doubt it not," replied the corregidor, folding Preciosa in his arms,
"for the same sensations have passed through my heart as through yours;
and how could so many strange particulars combine together unless it
were by a miracle?"

The people of the house were now lost in wonder, go