Praxilla looked at her father in alarm, but suddenly she, too, gave a piercing cry, snatched a chain from her neck, hurried towards Uarda, and seizing the jewel she held, exclaimed: 

“Here is the other half of the ornament, it belonged to my poor sister Xanthe!”

The old Greek was a pathetic sight, he struggled hard to collect himself, looking with tender delight at Uarda, his sinewy hands trembled as he compared the two pieces of the necklet; they matched precisely—­each represented the wing of an eagle which was attached to half an oval covered with an inscription; when they were laid together they formed the complete figure of a bird with out-spread wings, on whose breast the lines exactly matched of the following oracular verse: 

  “Alone each is a trifling thing, a woman’s useless toy
   But with its counterpart behold! the favorite bird of Zeus.”

A glance at the inscription convinced the king that he held in his hand the very jewel which he had put with his own hands round the neck of his daughter Xanthe on her marriage-day, and of which the other half had been preserved by her mother, from whom it had descended to Praxilla.  It had originally been made for his wife and her twin sister who had died young.  Before he made any enquiries, or asked for any explanations, he took Uarda’s head between his hands, and turning her face close to his he gazed at her features, as if he were reading a book in which he expected to find a memorial of all the blissful hours of his youth, and the girl felt no fear; nor did she shrink when he pressed his lips to her forehead, for she felt that this man’s blood ran in her own veins.  At last the king signed to the interpreter; Uarda was asked to tell all she knew of her mother, and when she said that she had come a captive to Thebes with an infant that had soon after died, that her father had bought her and had loved her in spite of her being dumb, the prince’s conviction became certainty; he acknowledged Uarda as his grandchild, and Praxilla clasped her in her arms.

Then he told Mena that it was now twenty years since his son-in-law had been killed, and his daughter Xanthe, whom Uarda exactly resembled, had been carried into captivity.  Praxilla was then only just born, and his wife died of the shock of such terrible news.  All his enquiries for Xanthe and her child had been fruitless, but he now remembered that once, when he had offered a large ransom for his daughter if she could be found, the Egyptians had enquired whether she were dumb, and that he had answered “no.”  No doubt Xanthe had lost the power of speech through grief, terror, and suffering.

The joy of the king was unspeakable, and Uarda was never tired of gazing at his daughter and holding her hand.

Then she turned to the interpreter.

“Tell me,” she said.  “How do I say ‘I am so very happy?’”

He told her, and she smilingly repeated his words.  “Now ’Uarda will love you with all her heart?’” and she said it after him in broken accents that sounded so sweet and so heart-felt, that the old man clasped her to his breast.