The preparations for the evening's party are underway as Clarissa makes her way through London.
"Big Ben Strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. the leaden circles dissolved in the air."
Clarissa thinks of how she loves London, life, this moment in June. She runs into her old friend Hugh Whitbread.
He speaks of how Evelyn Whitbread, his wife, was ill again, and he assured her that he would in fact be attending her party in the evening.