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In the midst of this squandering, this madness and surrender to caprice, the baroness preserved a moral background, and withdrew her daughter completely from the world in which the mother dwelt. She placed her child in a convent school and every month, the first money that she laid hands upon was used to pay for the girl’s tuition. When she had completed her education, the baroness intended to take her off to Antwerp and live there with her, resigning herself to the career of a respectable woman.

Niña Chucha would grumble and protest at her good friend’s whims, but she always ended by obeying them.

Manuel found the house a paradise; he had nothing to do and would spend his idle hours smoking, if there were anything to smoke, or walking along the Moncloa, accompanied by the baroness’s three dogs.

In the meantime Mingote was hard at work. His plan was to exploit Don Sergio Redondo, friend of the baroness’s father and former protector of the lady. The latter, with the instincts of an intriguing, deceitful wench, had informed her former protector that their relations had produced a boy; then she had told him that the boy had died, and afterward, that the boy was still alive.