Now, though Amina was fully as lovely in face and form as her young hostess, she yet lacked the moral beauty of Kunigunda.  Of a subtle and crafty disposition, she showed the gratitude of the serpent by stinging the hand extended to help her; in a word, she set herself to win the unlawful affections of the Lord of Fuerstenberg.  He, weak creature as he was, allowed the latent baseness of his nature to be stirred by her youth and beauty.  He listened when she whispered that Kunigunda had grown cold toward him; at her suggestion he interpreted his wife’s modest demeanour as indifference, and already he began to feel the yoke of matrimony heavy upon him.

Poor Kunigunda was in despair when she realized that her husband had transferred his affections; but what was worse, she learned that the pair were plotting against her life.  At length their cruel scheming succeeded, and one morning Kunigunda was found dead in her bed.  Franz made it known that she had been stifled by a fit of coughing, and her remains were hastily conveyed to the family vault.  Within a week the false Amina was the bride of the Baron von Fuerstenberg.

Little Hugo, the son of Kunigunda, was to suffer much at the hands of his stepmother and her dependents.  The new mistress of the Schloss Fuerstenberg hated the child as she had hated his mother, and Hugo was given into the charge of an ill-natured old nurse, who frequently beat him in the night because he awakened her with his cries.

One night the old hag was roused from her sleep by a strange sound, the sound of a cradle being rocked.  She imagined herself dreaming.  Who would come to this distant tower to rock the little Hugo?  Not Amina, of that she was sure!  Again the sound was heard, unmistakably the creaking of the cradle.  Drawing aside her bed-curtains, the crone beheld a strange sight.  Over the cradle a woman was bending, clad in long, white garments, and singing a low lullaby, and as she raised her pale face, behold! it was that of the dead Kunigunda.  The nurse could neither shriek nor faint; as though fascinated, she watched the wraith nursing her child, until at cockcrow Kunigunda vanished.

In trembling tones the nurse related what she had seen to Franz and Amina.  The Baron was scornful, and ridiculed the whole affair as a dream.  But the cunning Amina, though she did not believe that a ghost had visited the child, thought that perhaps her rival was not really dead, and her old hatred and jealousy were reawakened.  So she told her husband that she intended to see for herself whether there was any truth in the fantastic story, and would sleep that night in the nurse’s bed.  She did not mention her suspicions, nor the fact that she carried a sharp dagger.  She was roused in the night, as the old woman had been, by the sound of a cradle being rocked.  Stealthily drawing the curtains, she saw the white-robed form of the dead, the black mould clinging to her hair, the hue of death in her face.  With a wild cry Amina flung herself upon Kunigunda, only to find that she was stabbing at a thing of air, an impalpable apparition which vanished at a touch.  Overcome with rage and fear, she sank to the ground.  The wraith moved to the door, turning with a warning gesture ere she vanished from sight, and Amina lost consciousness.