Only when the baroness tried to caress her and stroke her hand she shrank away, and the blood mantled up to her cheeks.

Add to all this the womanly indignation she felt at having been so long deceived by Nino, and you will see that she was in a very vacillating frame of mind.
The baroness was a subtle woman, reckless and diplomatic by turns, and she was not blind to the sudden repulse she met with from Hedwig, unspoken though it was.

But she merely withdrew her hand, and sat thinking over the situation.

What she thought, no one knows; or at least, we can only guess it from what she did afterwards.

As for me, I have never blamed her at all, for she is the kind of woman I should have loved.