Allegedly, during the early years of her marriage, Mathilde had an affair with the Spanish diplomat Salvador Bermúdez de Castro y Díez [es], 1st Duke of Ripalda and Santa Lucía, with whom she had a daughter at the Villa Farnesina in Rome:[1]
María Salvadora Bermúdez de Castro (20 January 1864 – 18 September 1945), later 2nd Duchess of Santa Lucía. Sent to Brighton immediately after her birth, she was raised by her paternal family and legally adopted by her father only in 1879; she probably never saw her mother. She married Alvaro Pérez de Barradas y Fernández de Cordoba, 12th Marquess of Peñaflor.
Lodovico was still the heir of Francis as head of a deposed Royal House. He retained this position for the rest of his life but predeceased Francis on 8 June 1886. Francis was eventually succeeded by their younger brother Prince Alfonso, Count of Caserta. Mathilde survived her husband by thirty-nine years but never remarried.
