Free Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende Page A

in a liberal newspaper news of the disappearance of Señorita Paulina del Valle, word that the family had tried very hard to suppress. That saved the lovers’ lives.
    Finally Agustín del Valle accepted the fact that this was not the time to defy the law and that a public wedding would go farther than a double murder to cleanse the family honor. They set the guidelines for a negotiated peace and a week later, when everything was ready, Feliciano returned. The fugitives presented themselves at the del Valles’ home, accompanied by the groom’s brother, a lawyer, and the bishop. Jacob Todd was discreetly absent. Paulina wore a very simple dress, but when she took off her mantle she defiantly displayed a queen’s diadem. She entered on the arm of her future mother-in-law, who was prepared to speak for her virtue but was not given the opportunity. The last thing the family wanted was a second story in the newspaper, so Agustín del Valle had no choice but to receive his rebellious daughter and her undesirable suitor. He did so surrounded by his sons and nephews in the dining room, which had been converted into a tribunal for the occasion, while the women of the family, secluded at the opposite end of the house, learned the details from the maidservants, who listened behind doors and then ran to them with every word. They reported that the girl had shown up with diamonds glittering in her bristly new hair and had faced her father without a trace of shyness or fear, announcing that she still had the candelabras, and, in fact, had taken them only to gall the nuns. Agustín del Valle raised his riding crop but Feliciano stepped forward to receive the punishment. Then the bishop, very weary but with the weight of his authority intact, intervened with the irrefutable argument that there could be no public marriage to still the gossip if the bride and groom showed up with bruised faces.
    â€œAsk them to bring us hot chocolate, Agustín, and let us sit down and converse like decent people,” this officer of the Church proposed.
    And so they did. They ordered Paulina and the widow Rodríguez de Santa Cruz to wait outside the room because this was a man’s affair, and after consuming several pots of foaming chocolate they reached an agreement. They dictated a document in which the economic terms were set out clearly and the honor of both parties saved, signed it before a notary, and proceeded to plan the details of the wedding. One month later Jacob Todd attended an unforgettable ball in which the prodigal hospitality of the del Valle family reached new heights: the dancing, singing, and feasting lasted into the following morning and the guests all commented on the beauty of the bride, the happiness of the groom, and the good fortune of the del Valles, who had wed their daughter to a solid, if brand-new, fortune. The couple immediately left for the north.

A Ruined Reputation
    J acob Todd was sorry to see Feliciano and Paulina go; he had become good friends with the mining millionaire and his spunky wife. He felt as much at ease with the young impresarios as he began to feel ill at ease among the members of the Club de la Unión. Like him, the new industrialists were imbued with European ideas, they were modern and liberal, unlike the old Chilean oligarchy which at midcentury was decades behind the times. He still had one hundred and seventy Bibles stacked beneath his bed, which by now he had forgotten because he had long ago lost his bet. He had enough command of Spanish to manage on his own and, though it was not returned, he had never stopped loving Rose Sommers: two good reasons for staying in Chile. Her unfailing rebuffs had become a pleasant habit and no longer humiliated him. He learned to deflect them with irony and return them without malice, like a game of catch whose mysterious rules only they knew. He was acquainted with a few intellectuals and spent entire nights discussing French and