Chapter 6 Summary

Sofi met Domingo just before she turned fifteen at a feast day dance, but her father would not allow her to dance with him. His dark, wicked eyes and gap-toothed grin, and thought of no one and nothing else immediately captivated her until she saw him six months later at her quinceanera (a coming-out ball for Spanish debutantes). They danced all night, Sofi avoiding the disapproval of her father, and then Domingo courted her for the next three years. However, Sofi's family never believed he was good enough for her, and so a week after her eighteenth birthday, they eloped.

However, with a compulsion for cockfights, horses and card games, Domingo sold off all of Sofi's jewelry and the ten acres her grandfather had given them for a wedding present. Knowing there was no limit to his impulses; he left a year...