Instantly, on hearing the contents of the paper, the corregidora recognised the trinkets, put them to her lips, kissed them again and again, and swooned 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, going about and asking each other, “What is all this?” but erring widely in their conjectures; for who would have imagined that the gitanilla was the daughter of their lord?  The corregidor told his wife and daughter and the old gipsy that he desired the matter should be kept secret until he should himself think fit to divulge it.  As for the old gipsy, he assured her