Dolores, an innocent country girl, arrives as a maid to a rich house, where she meets a street vendor with whom she falls in love, until the dangers of the city catch up with her.

Luisa returns to her village, where she cares for her uncle on his deathbed, who tells her the story of his life with a hidden purpose.

In this Mexican version of Winterset (inspired by the 20s Sacco Vanzetti case) an idealistic youth searches for the culprit behind a crime that his father was wrongly accused of several years before.

On March 22, four days after returning to his home in Andalusia, Luis de Vargas writes the first of his letters to his uncle and favorite professor at the seminary. He reports that his father intends to fatten him up during his vacation, to have him ready to return in the fall to finish his training for the priesthood. He mentions in passing that his father is courting a twenty-year-old, attractive widow, Pepita Jiménez; his father is fifty-five years old. Pepita had been married for only a short time to an eighty-year-old moneylender named Gumersindo. Luis is not eager to see his father marry again, but he promises his uncle not to judge Pepita before he knows her.