‘What are you saying, Cissy? Who trembles like that birch?’
‘I was thinking of Rose, she seems dreadfully upset, Morton never looks at her now.’
‘I think that Morton would have married her if Mildred hadn’t appeared on the scene. I know he was thinking of settling down.’
‘Mildred is a mystery. Her pleasure seems to be to upset people’s lives. You remember poor Ralph Hoskin. He died of a broken heart. I can’t make Mildred out, she tells a lot of lies. She’s always talking about her virtue. But I hardly think that Morton would be as devoted to her as he is if he weren’t her lover. Do you think so?’
‘I don’t know, men are very strange.’
Elsie rose to her feet. She put aside her camp stool, walked back a few yards, and looked at her picture. The motive of her picture was a bending birch a
