Marianne Dashwood has looked forward to coming to London because there, as she expects, she will see again the man she loves, John Willoughby. But though he leaves his card, he doesn't visit, he doesn't answer her letters, he's nowhere to be found. After a few days she has worked herself up into a nearly hysterical state, so her sister Elinor drags her off on a shopping expedition to one of the smartest streets of the West End:

Like much of the writing in Sense and Sensibility, this is hyperbolic and exaggerated, but perhaps it gives a fair approximation of Marianne's feverish, restless state. Rather than just telling the reader that Marianne was constantly on the lookout for Willoughby, the narrator seems to enact an odd collusion with her character. The rhythms of the prose partake of her hectic emotions, though the judgements are those of her calm and staider sister.