While thus variously agitated had been the feelings of some, whose hearts, by circumstances, had become interested in this idle _fête_, the principal movers in it, in _their_ way, were not less anxious for its success and brilliancy. For the preservation of its exclusive and chosen character, and the arrangement of all its endless detail of luxury, each member of the _société choisie_ was more or less busy and _affairé_. Lady Tilney, with her usual activity, was the first in her exertions; driving to the houses of all connected with the arrangements, examining into every minute particular, and, above all, guarding against the possibility of any persons whose name was not on her list creeping in through the weakness of some member of the committee, who, in a moment of unallowed natural feeling, might have invited a sister, or a mother, or a brother, who were from a class _without the pale_. At Lady Ellersby's she met Lady Tenderden, and the Countess Leinsengen, and Lady De Chere, and Lord Boileau, who came in, as though by chance, one after the other, each saying, in different words, the same thing. "How fortunate I am to have met you! I wished to know at what hour you are to go to Avington Park to-morrow;" and all applied to Lady Tilney. She named three o'clock. "La!" cried Lady Ellersby, "I shall not have awoke from my first sleep at that hour: surely four o'clock is quite time enough." "_I_ shall not go till den," cried the Comtesse Leinsengen. "One has always enough of dose tings dat last for ever. Breakfast, dinner, supper, and den breakfast again, before one gets away." "Oh! but you know," replied Lady Tenderden, "dis _fête_, my dear comtesse, is not like any other; dere will be no one dere but ourselves, our own _société_; and dere are so many pleasant tings to be done,--going on de water, walking about, and de _loterie_; one would not choose to lose dat." "Oh! certainly not," exclaimed Lady Boileau. "I am told there are to be some exceedingly magnificent things. Lord Albert D'Esterre has bought some really fine jewels." "Perhaps so," said Lady De Chere in her blunt way; "but we all know _who_ will have these: the chances are wisely ordained _beforehand_." "Have you got your _billet de loterie_?" asked the Comtesse Leinsengen of the speaker. "No," replied Lady De Chere with an air of pique, "but I _am_ to have one." "Certainly," rejoined Lady Tilney, who read the Comtesse's intended triumph; and who chose to show her, on many occasions, that if any one had a right to tyrannize it was herself, or that at least, if such a thing were attempted, it should be _à qui mieux mieux_. "Certainly, Lady Boileau, there will be a lottery ticket for _you_, and all the _other_ ladies; at least, I shall conceive it exceedingly wrong indeed if there is not. But should there be any mistake, depend upon _my_ rectifying it. And now, ladies," she continued, addressing them generally, "there is one point we have not touched upon--our costume."