A lady possessed of great personal attractions, and calling herself by the convenient name of Smith, applied to an office to insure the life of a woman residing at the west end of the town. When asked the reason, she replied, that she had advanced various sums to place this person in business as a milliner, and that to effect an insurance on her life was the only way of securing the money in case her _protégée_ should die. The life was a good one, the references were satisfactory, and the policy was made out. In a few months a fine carriage, with coachman and footman in splendid livery, drove up to the door of the insurance office, and Mrs. Smith made her appearance to announce the death of the person insured. Whether the lady overacted her part, or whether the carriage excited suspicion, when it was meant to inspire confidence, is uncertain; but the officers of the society deemed it wise to inquire into the circumstances of the death. The house where the milliner had resided was mean; the immediate neighbourhood was poor; there was no indication of business to justify the assurance of her life for a large sum. The actuary who made these investigations went farther. He instituted an inquiry at the other existing offices. At the very first he went to, the same lady had effected an insurance on another person’s life. At the next, and the next, and the next, she was known; at each she had procured policies on various lives for large sums, and wherever this woman had effected an insurance, within three months the person insured had died. There was scarcely an office in town where she had not appeared, and scarcely an institution which had not paid her various sums of money on lives which had suddenly fallen. Her father, her mother, her sister, had been insured and had died, like all the rest, of cholera, and this too at a time when the cholera was not in active existence. Farther inquiries elicited the information that she was the mistress of a banker, whose carriage she employed to create an effect, and whose life it is very fortunate she did not insure.