So refreshing to see her acting like a teenager for once! Even the narrator, usually so respectful of Elinor, gets in a little dig at her wishful thinking:

"Elinor placed all that was astonishing in this way of acting to his mother's account; and it was happy for her that he had a mother whose character was so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general excuse for everything strange on the part of her son."