"Your agent says she's months behind in her rent."
"Smith talks too much. What if she is? I can afford to be patient with her. The girl has had a hard time. Her father seems to have deserted her. Oh, I know they're a shiftless pair, but half the prejudice against them is that they are strangers. I know what that is," she added bitterly. "I've been a stranger myself in a rural community. You'll have to give me a better reason than that, Philip."
"I can," he said.
She lifted her eyebrows. "There's talk then? I suppose so. There's always talk, if a girl 's pretty enough and unprotected enough. The poor little foolish Mag Hendersons of the world! Oh," she cried, "I wonder that men dare to speak of them!"
"I dare," said Benoix, quietly. "I've my parish to think of. The girl's a plague-spot. Vice is as contagious as any other disease. Besides, it 's a question of her own safety. She's been threatened. That's why the father left."
"What?" cried Mrs. Kildare. "The 'Possum-Hunters'? You mean they are trying to run my affairs again?"
It was several years since men in masks had waged their anonymous warfare against certain tobacco planters whose plans did not accord with the sentiment of the community. The organization of Night Riders was supposed to be repressed. But power without penalty is too heady a draft to be relinquished easily, by men who have once known the taste of it.
Benoix nodded. "She has had warning."
Mrs. Kildare's lips set in a straight line. "Let them come! They'll try that sort of thing once too often."
"Yes—but it might be once too often for Mag, too. She—have you seen her lately?"