very cold and distant terms that his affections have long been engaged elsewhere and he is sorry if she ever mistakenly thought otherwise. He also returns all her letters and the lock of hair that she had "so obligingly bestowed upon him". Marianne is thrown into utter despair. Elinor thinks that Willoughby has broken an engagement with Marianne, but she explains that they were never engaged. Elinor attempts in vain to afford Marianne some consolation, and tells her to think of her family and to exert herself through this difficult interval of sorrow. After the ball it is revealed that Mr. Willoughby is now engaged to a fashionable young woman named Miss Grey who has a fortune of £50,000. Willoughby's scandal Colonel Brandon, a friend of Elinor and Marianne, then explains the reason for Willoughby's abrupt change of heart. It turns out that Willoughby had seduced the Colonel's 15-year-old ward, Miss Eliza Williams, then abandoned her though she was pregnant. Brandon finds her, but by doing so Willoughby's actions are revealed to the world. When his aunt learns of the scandal, she demands that he makes amends to Eliza. When he refuses, she expels him from her estate and disinherits him, leaving him penniless and with many debts. It is at this point that he flees to London in search of a rich wife. Elinor subsequently tells Marianne about this in order that she see what a selfish person Willoughby is. Marianne's illness Marianne is so distressed by Willoughby's rejection that at Cleveland Park, on her way home with Elinor, she becomes sick with putrid fever. She is not expected to survive, but does pull through. Hearing of her illness, Willoughby visits the house. He speaks to Elinor and confesses he had been genuinely in love with Marianne and intended to ask her to marry him (but says nothing of the girl he seduced). But when the scandal broke and his aunt dismissed him from her favour, he felt he had to marry for money because of his penniless state and debts. Willoughby's punishment for his treatment of Marianne is to spend the rest of his life married to a woman he does not even like, and to know that his bad behaviour lost him the woman he did love. He elicits Elinor's pity because his choice has made him unhappy, but she is disgusted by the callous way in