“A certain sort of ineligibility, dear boy,” returned the lady with a flattering cadence.  “Your capital did not happen to consist of money.  Tell me all, Nat.  Who is she?”

He shook his head.  “She’s still not impossible, but improbable,” he returned.

“Oh, you are too difficult, my dear.  Really, I thought at the time our misfortunes fell upon us that it was going to be Miss Caton.  She would have been a great assistance to you, Nat.  It isn’t as if you could even afford to be a bachelor.  In these days so much is expected of them.  How is your mother?” Mrs. Evringham made the addition in that tone of fixed sympathy which one employs when only a depressing answer can be expected.

“Very well, thank you.”

“You mean as well as usual, I suppose.”

“No, I mean well.  Wonderful, isn’t it?”

“Really, Nat?” Mrs. Evringham straightened up in her interest.  “Who did it?”

“She was healed by Christian Science.”

“You don’t mean it!”

“Indeed I do.”

Mrs. Evringham thanked her holy stars that Eloise was absent.

“Well!  I never for one moment classed your mother as a malade imaginaire!” exclaimed the lady.

Her companion raised his eyebrows.  “I fancy no one did who knew her.”

“You believe it, then?”

“I should be an idiot if I didn’t.”

“Do you mean to say she is out of her wheeled chair?”

“No chairs for her now.  When she wishes to walk she walks.”

“Then she always could!” declared Mrs. Evringham.

“I think you know better than that,” returned the other calmly.

“How long since?” asked Mrs. Evringham.

“Three months.”

Silence.

“Aren’t you glad for her?” asked Bonnell with a slight smile of curiosity into the disturbed face.  “I ought to have told you at first that osteopathy did it; then after your joy had subsided, break the truth gently.”

“Of course I’m glad,” returned the other stiffly, “but I’d rather Eloise did not hear of it at once.”

“May I know why?”

“Certainly.  We have a very dear friend who is a physician.  It looks very much as if he might be something nearer than a friend.  It is he with whom Eloise is riding this afternoon.  It is very distasteful, naturally, to have these alleged cures discussed in our family.  We have had some annoyance in that line already.  You can understand how doctors must feel.”

“Yes, so long as they believe a cure to be only alleged; but where one is convinced that previously hopeless conditions have been healed, and it does happen once in a while, they are glad of it, I’m confident.  We haven’t a finer, broader minded class of men in our country than our physicians.”

“I think so,” agreed Mrs. Evringham, drawing herself up with a fleeting vision of the Ballard place on Mountain Avenue.