country, but Mrs. Hofer, who
was a patriot or nothing, did not hesitate to mix them with the best
efforts of her fellow-citizens, nor to proclaim her preference for the
native product. It was all very well to have old masters, and modern
Europeans, if it was the thing, but she never felt quite at home with
them, and liked her California inside as well as out.

The four little reception-rooms, or boudoirs, were so many cabinets for
treasures, and on the night of the ball, like the rest of the rooms on
this floor, were entirely without further adornment; only the white
marble of the spiral stair was festooned with crimson roses; and the
narrow hall that led from the rotunda to the new ballroom was dressed in
imitation of a long arbor of grape-vines, and hung with clusters of
hot-house grapes and Chinese lanterns. The ballroom had been built out
from the back of the house upon the steep drop of the hill, and as even
its graduated foundation did not lift it to the level of the first
floor, it was reached by a short flight of steps. For three months Mrs.
Hofer's judicious hints had excited the curiosity of the town, and all
that were not bedridden had presented themselves at as early an hour as
self-respect would permit. Mrs. Hofer, to use her own phrase, had
"turned herself loose," on this room, and even her husband, who had
gasped at the sum total, indulgent as he was, admitted to-night that
"she knew what she was about." The immense room was built to simulate a
patio in Spain. The domed roof, in the blaze of light below, looked to
be the dim blue vault of the night sky. The gallery that encircled the
room was divided into balconies, and from them depended Gobelin
tapestries, Eastern rugs, silken shawls--yellow embroidered with red,
blue embroidered with white--after the manner of Spain on festa days.
The background of the gallery was a mass of tropical plants alternating
with latticed windows and long glass doors. Sitting with an arm or elbow
on the railing, was every California woman of Mrs. Hofer's acquaintance
that had the inherited right to wear a mantilla, a rose over her ear,
and wield a large black fan; that is to say, those that were too old or
too indifferent to dance. How Ada Hofer induced them to form a part of
her decorations nobody ever knew, themselves least of all; but there, to
the amazement and delight of the hundreds below, they were, and it was
many years since the majority of them had looked so handsom