urn to California she went to see it, and, finding it even more
lovely than she had been told, the bargain was struck. It had been
evident for some time, too, that her health required a warmer climate
than that of San Francisco, and, above all, she longed for a place
where she might live more in the open than the winds and fogs of the
bay city permitted. So, though she was very sad at leaving the house
on the heights where she had lived long enough for her heart-strings
to take root, she sold it in 1908 and removed to the southern place,
there to enter on a new phase of her life.

The house at Hyde and Lombard Streets, following out the curious
fatality that made everything connected with her take on some romantic
aspect, became for a time the abode of Carmelite Sisters, the Roman
Catholic Order whose strict rules require its devotees to live almost
completely cut off from the world. The long drawing-room, where Mrs.
Stevenson had entertained so many of the great people of the earth,
became the chapel, and in place of the light laughter and gay talk
that once echoed from its walls only the low intoning of the mass was
heard. At the front door, where the Indian pagan idols had kept guard,
a revolving cylinder was placed so that the charitable might put in
their donations without seeing the faces or hearing the voices of the
immured nuns. In the green garden where Mrs. Stevenson had so often
walked and dreamed of other days the gentle sisters knelt and prayed
that the sins of the world might be forgiven.

CHAPTER XII

THE LAST DAYS AT SANTA BARBARA.

Of all the beautiful places of the earth where it was Fanny
Stevenson's good fortune to set up her household gods at various
times, perhaps the loveliest of all was this spot on the peaceful
shore of the sunset sea, under the patronage of the noble lady, Saint
Barbara. In the Samoan gardens tropical flowers flamed under the hot
rays of the vertical sun; in San Francisco geraniums and fuchsias
rejoiced and grew prodigiously in the salt sea fog; but at Santa
Barbara, where north and south meet, the plants of every land thrive
as though native born. The scarlet hibiscus, child of the tropics,
grows side by side with the aster of northern climes; the
bougainvillaea flings out its purple sprays in close neighbourhood to
the roses of old England; the sweet-william, dear to the hearts of our
grandmothers, blooms in rich profusion in the shade of the
pomegranate; and in