The couple lived in Brussels within walking distance of the royal palace and spent the summer months at her husband's family castle in Chevetogne in Namur Province.

[1] She wrote a regular fashion column and covered galas and balls, but also wrote pieces of social commentary which were ahead of their time, including L’influence féminine et les colonies (The female influence and the colonies), La ligue nationale pour la protection de l’enfance noire au Congo belge (The National League for the protection of black children in the Belgian Congo) and L’âge d’admission des enfants au travail (The entrance age of working children),[4] publishing from 1913 in magazines like La Femme belge.

[1][3] She undertook nursing classes herself, and upon hearing rumors of impending war, took steps to have the Belgian Red Cross assist with training at the school.

The facility served as a temporary emergency station, called an "ambulance",[6] and required modifications to be suitable, such as remaking the castle living room into an operating theater.

[8] Closing the hospital,[7] in November, she traveled through the Dutch port of Eijsden, staying with family until she could book passage on the ferry to Calais.

[7] Arriving in Calais, the Countess presented herself to Dr. Antoine Depage, who refused her services for his famed Ambulance de l'Océan [fr].

When her family doctor, Léopold Mélis, who was also the Chief Inspector of the Health Service for the Belgian army, discovered she was working as a seamstress and not a nurse, he transferred her to Poperinge to help him establish a typhoid hospital there.

It also provided funds and supplies for aid stations throughout the country, organized typhoid inoculations, distributed milk for children, helped with sanitary inspections and water purification programs, built two orphanages and established nurseries, as well as rescuing the cultural heritage and property of churches, convents and civic buildings.

She published several autobiographical works, including Mon journal d’infirmière (My Nursing Journal, 1923); Nos souverains à La Panne (Our rulers in De Panne), which was serialized in the March and April 1939 editions of Revue belge; and wrote two unpublished works L’Autre Guerre (The Other War) and British Area.