They fell madly in love with one another.
It so happened that just then a young man called the Marques de San Esteban, whom they had met at San Sebastian the summer before, wrote to the duchess and asked for Pilar's hand in marriage.
He was extremely eligible and the two families had formed alliances from time to time ever since the reign of Philip II.
The duchess was determined not to stand any more nonsense, and when she told Pilar of the proposal added that she had shilly-shallied long enough. She must either marry him or she should go into a convent.
'I'm not going to do either the one or the other,' said Pilar.
'What are you going to do then?
I have given you a home long enough.'
'I'm going to marry JosГ© LeГіn.'
'Who is he?'
Pilar hesitated for a moment and it may be, it is indeed to be hoped, that she blushed a little.
'He's the countess's coachman.'
'What countess?'
'The Countess de Marbella.'
I remembered the duchess well and I am sure that when roused she stuck at little.
She raged, she implored, she cried, she argued.
There was a terrific scene.
People said that she slapped her daughter and pulled her hair, but I have an impression that Pilar in such a pass was capable of hitting back.
She repeated that she loved Jose Leon and he loved her.
She was determined to marry him.
The duchess called a family council.
The matter was put before them and it was decided that to save them all from disgrace Pilar should be taken away to the country and kept there till she had recovered from her infatuation.
Pilar got wind of the scheme and put a stop to it by slipping out of the window of her room one night when everyone was asleep and going to live with her lover's parents.
They were respectable persons who inhabited a small apartment on the unfashionable side of the Guadalquivir, in the quarter called Triana.
After that no concealment was possible.
The fat was in the fire and the clubs along the Sierpes buzzed with the scandal.
Waiters were kept busy bringing trays of little glasses of Manzanilla to the members from the neighbouring wine-shops.
They gossiped and laughed over the scandal, and Pilar's rejected suitors were the recipients of many congratulations. What an escape!
The duchess was in despair.
She could think of nothing better to do than go to the Archbishop, her trusted friend and former confessor, and beg him himself to reason with the infatuated girl.
Pilar was summoned to the episcopal palace, and the good old man, used to intervening in family quarrels, did his utmost to show her the folly of her course.
But she would not be persuaded. Nothing that anyone could say would induce her to forsake the man she loved.
The duchess, waiting in an adjoining room, was sent for and made a final appeal to her daughter.
In vain.
Pilar returned to her humble lodging and the duchess in tears was left alone with the Archbishop.
The Archbishop was no less astute than he was pious, and when he saw that the distracted woman was in a fit state to listen to him, advised her as a last resource to go to the Countess de Marbella.
She was the cleverest woman in Seville and it might be that she could do something.
At first the duchess indignantly refused.
She would never suffer the humiliation of appealing to her greatest enemy.
Sooner might the ancient house of Dos Palos fall in ruin.
The Archbishop was accustomed to dealing with tiresome women.
He set himself with gentle cunning to induce her to change her mind and presently she consented to throw herself on the Frenchwoman's mercy.
With rage in her heart she sent a message asking if she might see her, and that afternoon was ushered into her drawing-room.
The countess of course had been one of the first to hear the story, but she listened to the unhappy mother as though she had not known a thing about it.
She relished the situation enormously.
It was the crowning triumph to have the vindictive duchess on her knees before her.
But she was at heart a good-natured woman and she had a sense of humour.
'It's a most unfortunate situation,' she said. 'And I'm sorry that one of my servants should be the occasion of it.
But I don't exactly see what I can do.'
The duchess would have liked to slap her painted face and her voice trembled a little with the effort she made to control her anger.
'It is not for my own sake I'm asking you to help.