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In Madrid the baroness committed a thousand follies. She tried to procure a divorce, that she might marry a ruined aristocrat. But when her bill of divorcement was all prepared for filing, she learned that her husband was seriously ill, and no sooner did she get the news than she left Madrid, hurried to Antwerp, nursed the baron, saved his life, fell in love all over again and presented him with a baby girl.

During this second epoch of their love the couple threw a dense veil over the great question that had formerly divided them. The baroness and the baron made mutual concessions, and the baroness was well on the way to becoming an excellent Flemish dame when she was left a widow.

She returned to Madrid with her daughter, and soon her Levantine instincts reawakened. Her brother-in-law, uncle and guardian of the child, helped her out with a monthly stipend, but this was not enough. A friend of her father’s,—a certain Don Sergio Redondo, a very wealthy merchant,—offered her his hand; but the baroness did not accept, and preferred his patronage to being his wife. Soon she deceived him with another, and for twelve years she continued this duplicity.