"Mabelle," she thought, "is a dangerous woman, going about and saying things like that when she knows nothing."
Mabelle was a constructive gossip. Having nothing to keep her occupied, she sat about all day thinking up things, putting two and two together, pinning odd pieces of stories together to construct a whole, but she did have (thought Emma) an uncanny way of scenting out scandal; her only fault was that she sometimes told the story before in fact it had happened. She came upon a scrap, the merest suspicion of some dubious story, and presently after days of morbid brooding it reappeared, trimmed and garnished to perfection, with such an air of reality about it that if it wasn't true, it might easily have been.
It was the uncanny faculty of Mabelle's that really troubled Emma. Her suspicion of Mary Conyngham frightened her even while it gave her satisfaction. It occurred to her that Philip was now quite beyond control, as his father had sometimes been. Anything might happen. She dared not think of it. For a moment she felt the quick shadow of foreboding, of some tragedy that lay ahead, beyond the power of anything to prevent.
She shook it off quickly, thinking, "That is nonsense. I can still bring Philip to his senses."
Inside the house, she prepared her own supper, and spent an hour in clearing up her own house, putting from sight every trace of Naomi.
At nine o'clock Moses Slade came to call. He was in a furious temper. He brought with him a labor periodical, called The Beacon.
