Helen gets a first-hand glimpse of how Arthur most likely spends his nights away in London: in drunken and idiotic debauchery with his friends, all of whom egg each other on. Hattersley’s treatment of Milicent is particularly shameful, but neither she nor Helen has any real power to put a stop to such behavior. Instead, they are forced by circumstance and societal expectations to stand by and tolerate the awful displays of immaturity and decadence because the men are, after all, pleasing themselves as society tells them to.