Much of this was due to the fact that the original casa--an adobe
house of no mean pretensions, dating back to the early Spanish
occupation--had been kept intact, sheathed in a shell of dark-red
wood, and still retaining its patio; or inner court-yard,
surrounded by low galleries, while additions, greater in extent
than the main building, had been erected--not as wings and
projections, but massed upon it on either side, changing its rigid
square outlines to a vague parallelogram. While the patio retained
the Spanish conception of al fresco seclusion, a vast colonnade of
veranda on the southern side was a concession to American taste,
and its breadth gave that depth of shadow to the inner rooms which
had been lost in the thinner shell of the new erection. Its
cloistered gloom was lightened by the red fires of cardinal flowers
dropping from the roof, by the yellow sunshine of the jessamine
creeping up the columns, by billows of heliotropes breaking over
its base as a purple sea. Nowhere else did the opulence of this
climate of blossoms show itself as vividly. Even the Castilian
roses, that grew as vines along the east front, the fuchsias, that
attained the dignity of trees, in the patio, or the four or five
monster passion-vines that bestarred the low western wall, and told
over and over again their mystic story--paled before the sensuous
glory of the south veranda.
As the sun arose, that part of the quiet house first touched by its
light seemed to waken.
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