The Palmers — Sense and Sensibility

Marianne awakens still miserable, oscillating between excusing Willoughby and condemning him, while rejecting Mrs. Jennings's sympathy as gossip. A letter from their mother, brought with cruel cheerfulness, crushes Marianne's hope of hearing from Willoughby and renews her urgency to return home. Elinor writes Mrs. Dashwood for direction while Colonel Brandon calls, resolved to give Marianne lasting conviction of Willoughby's character. He recalls the Barton dance when he spoke of a woman like Marianne: his cousin Eliza, loved from childhood, forced to marry his brother, seduced, divorced, and found dying in a sponging-house after leaving a daughter, little Eliza.

That child, now grown, was seduced and abandoned in Bath by Willoughby, who promised return and gave neither help nor address. Brandon's sudden Whitwell departure was to rescue her; he met Willoughby and fought a duel kept secret. He asks Elinor to use the story to lessen Marianne's self-reproach by comparison with Eliza's fate. Elinor thanks him, believing truth will help more than false acquittal, and learns he has placed mother and child in the country. Brandon's painful testimony replaces rumor with fact, revealing Willoughby's prior cruelty to another vulnerable woman. Brandon's testimony replaces rumor with fact about Willoughby's prior cruelty to another woman.