Passion has its price when a repressed bachelor in a mid-life crisis falls for one of his teenaged servants. Don Andres is the last heir of the wealthy Avalos family. At an age of 58 he feels that life has been a long, unfulfilled search for meaning. He realizes that he has been too interested in books instead of people. When he hires a seventeen-year old peasant girl, Estela to take care of his theatrical and temperamental grandmother Dona Elisa, he falls hard. The nurse Estela awakens a desire he cannot contain; he despises himself and is shamed by these unwanted, strong feelings. He is wracked by jealousy when he discovers that Estela is in love with the youngster Mario. The inevitable breakdown of the middle-aged man develops in parallel with the fall of the mighty family and the decay of the family manor.