when at last we came out into the warm
sun and flowery brightness of California, straight from the gloom and
chill of an Indiana November, it was as though the gates of paradise
had suddenly opened.

Not long after her return to California, finding a reconciliation with
her husband to be quite out of the question, Mrs. Osbourne decided to
bring suit for divorce, which was eventually granted without
opposition.

In the meantime, being much run down in health as a result of these
harassing anxieties, she wished to seek rest in some quiet place free
from unpleasant associations. This she found in the charming little
coast town of Monterey, which was then still unspoiled by tourist
travel, and, taking her family with her, she went there for a stay of
several months. In the soft air and peaceful atmosphere of this place
her health and spirits soon revived. There she found an opportunity to
indulge her skill as a horsewoman, and at any time she might have been
seen galloping along the country roads on her little mustang,
Clavel.[9] She even joined a party of friends who accompanied a band
of _vaqueros_[10] in a great _rodeo_[11] on the San Francisquito ranch
near Monterey. We rode for days from station to station, through a
delightful country, under the feathery, scented redwoods and beside
clear mountain-streams in which the trout leaped. We slept in barns on
the hay or on the far-from-downy rawhide cots in the ranch shanties,
and subsisted on freshly killed beef hastily barbecued over the
campfire, coming back to Monterey sunburned to a fine mahogany.

[Footnote 9: A Spanish word, pronounced clahvel, and
meaning a pink.]

[Footnote 10: Cowboys.]

[Footnote 11: Cattle round-up.]

CHAPTER V

IN CALIFORNIA WITH ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

As the months passed, Stevenson, drawn by an irresistible desire to
see the one who had become dearest in all the world to him, and having
heard that she was soon to be freed from the bonds that held her to
another, decided to take ship for America. After the long ocean voyage
and the fatiguing journey from sea to sea, which he has himself so
graphically described, he went straight to meet the family at
Monterey.

In the year 1879 there remained one spot in practical America where
the Spirit of Romance still lingered, though even there she stood
a-tiptoe, ready to take wing into the mists of the Pacific. It seems
fittin