in happiness and safety.

In the meantime the wicked stepmother, who had caused these two young
people such misery, supposed that the sister had been devoured by wild
beasts, and that the fawn had been hunted to death. Therefore when she
heard of their happiness, such envy and malice arose in her heart that
she could find no rest till she had tried to destroy it.

She and her ugly daughter came to the castle when the queen had a little
baby, and one of them pretended to be a nurse, and at last got the
mother and child into their power.

They shut the queen up in the bath, and tried to suffocate her, and the
old woman put her own ugly daughter in the queen's bed that the king
might not know she was away.

She would not, however, let him speak to her, but pretended that she
must be kept quite quiet.

The queen escaped from the bath-room, where the wicked old woman had
locked her up, but she did not go far, as she wanted to watch over her
child and the little fawn.

For two nights the baby's nurse saw a figure of the queen come into the
room and take up her baby and nurse it. Then she told the king, and he
determined to watch himself. The old stepmother, who acted as nurse to
her ugly daughter, whom she tried to make the king believe was his wife,
had said that the queen was too weak to see him, and never left her
room. "There cannot be two queens," said the king to himself, "so
to-night I will watch in the nursery." As soon as the figure came in and