Without entering into repulsive detail, I will endeavour to give the reader some idea of the different methods under which the nefarious business is conducted. The “houses of ill-fame” differ as widely in the extent and quality of their dealings as the houses of honesty and fair commerce. There are houses of “ill-fame” in the most fashionable quarters of the town, just as there are in Wapping—houses that are let and sub-let until they reach a rental as high as three and four hundred pounds a-year. It is not in those aristocratic dens of infamy, however, that women suffer most; none but the most costly wares are on sale at such establishments, and it is to the interest of the hucksters who traffic in them to deal with them delicately as circumstances will permit, to humour and coax and caress them as pet animals are coaxed and humoured. Nor would the creatures themselves tolerate anything in the shape of brutal treatment at the hands of those who harbour them. They “know their value,” and as a rule are exacting, imperious, and insolent towards their “landlords.” Unlike their sister unfortunates lower sunk in iniquity, they would experience no difficulty in procuring new “lodgings.” The doors of a hundred establishments such as that she now honours with residence are open to her. With a handsome face and a full purse, the whole of the devilish crew of brothel-keepers are her slaves, her fawning, cringing slaves, ready to lick the dust from her shoes, so that she pays regularly her rent of ten guineas a-week, and fails not to induce her “friends” to drink champagne at a guinea a bottle. Possibly the gay lady may come to the “bitter end” some day, but at present, except from the moral point of view, she is not an object for commiseration. She at least has all that she deliberately bargains for—fine clothes, rich food, plenty of money, a carriage to ride in, the slave-like obedience of her “inferiors,” and the fulsome adulation of those who deal with her for her worth. Very often (though under the circumstances it is doubtful if from any aspect this is an advantage) she finds a fool with money who is willing to marry her; but whether she is content to accept the decent change, and to abide by it, of course depends on her nature. Whether her husband adheres to his rash bargain is a question that time only can solve. He at least, if he be a vicious man as well as a fool, may argue that she will be little the worse than when he found her if he leaves her; while possibly she may gather consolation from the same method of argument.