The author offers some excuse for Lord Steyne's dissoluteness by telling of his anxiety over the family insanity. Lord Steyne seeks to forget it through sensuous pleasure; his wife seeks refuge in religion. The inhabitants of Vanity Fair are willing to shut their eyes to Lord Steyne's immoralities because he has both money and position. This fact should be remembered later when Rebecca meets catastrophe.
Tom Eaves, a combination of eavesdropper and Peeping Tom, thinks he knows everything and judges with a cynical eye, yet he too, bows before a "great man" and having put all his money into an annuity, does not hate his relatives and has no "feeling with regard to his betters, but a constant and generous desire to dine with them."
Lord Steyne's prediction that Becky can't stay at the top of Vanity Fair society proves prophetic. Circumstances are closing in about Becky: the cache in her desk will betray her. At first, only the servants have talked about her; now the people at Court notice Lord Steyne's absorbed attention to her. Although she has been invited to Lord Steyne's home by his ladies, and she seems at the culmination of success, the potential of her destruction grows stronger.
The author, presenting the good and the bad, allows the reader to admire Lord Steyne in one incident, at least. Although he is in the best humor when he is torturing his wife and daughter-in-law; yet when his wife rescues Becky, he is grateful and tells his wife. Becky too, shows a moment of human kindness when she appreciates Lady Steyne's kindness in speaking to her and asking her to sing.
