"Yes!" retorted the poor woman. "You people are robbing the poor—that’s what it is! And after fifteen years! Why, I’ve paid your company more in that time than what they would have paid to bury my Bertha!" At a small house in the Loftus Road he knocked three times, and a dwarfed, red-eyed girl at last opened the door. "Poor mother’s dead, Mr. Boyne! Didn’t you see the blinds?" she asked. "Dead!" he exclaimed, looking at the little window of the sitting-room. "Get your book." "I’ll go and get it," was the girl’s reply. "Mother died late last night. The doctor says it’s heart disease." "All right. Give me the book," he said brutally. "I suppose we’ll have to pay. You paid up last week, didn’t you?" "Yes, sir, I paid you—and you’ll find it down," the girl said, and, disappearing, she presently returned with the insurance book. The house-to-house visits of the insurance collector of those fat dividend paying companies who insure the lives of the lower classes are truly fraught with many strange dramas and stirring tales of poverty and misfortune. While Bernard Boyne was on his weary round, Ena Pollen alighted from a taxi at the private hotel in Lancaster Gate, a big, old-fashioned house which for years had been known to country visitors to London as a quiet and excellent place in which to stay. The young man-servant who opened the door told her that Mrs. Morrison was upstairs. The proprietor’s wife met her in the hall, and, in response to the Red Widow’s inquiry, said: "Mrs. Morrison hasn’t been very well for a couple of days. She was taken ill last night, so I called my doctor—Doctor Tressider—and he came to see her. He seems puzzled. He can’t make out at present what’s the matter with her. He’s calling again to-night. She came over very ill when she returned from Brighton." "I’ll go upstairs," said Mrs. Pollen. "It is most unfortunate, isn’t it? She’s only here in town for a short time, and now she’s taken ill like this. I do hope it’s nothing serious." "Oh, no. I asked Doctor Tressider, and he thinks it is simply a little stomach trouble. To-morrow she’ll be better," was the woman’s reply. So Ena ascended the stairs, and, after tapping at the door, entered the neat little bedroom on the second floor. "Well, dear!" she exclaimed cheerily as she entered. "I couldn’t let the day pass without coming to see you. Whatever is the matter?" "I really don’t know, Ena," replied Mrs. Morrison of Carsphairn. "I felt so ill in the train coming up to Victoria that I had great difficulty in getting back here." "But the doctor says you’ll be all right to-morrow," said Ena. "I feel awfully ill," replied the other feebly. "I seem so feverish—hot at one moment and cold at another." "No, no," said Mrs. Pollen cheerily. "You’ll be all right, never fear. When one feels feverish one’s temperature is generally below normal. I do hope these people are looking after you all right?"