It therefore resulted that
when Mr. and Mrs. Hittaway went to Scotland, which they would endeavour to
do every year, it was very important that they should accomplish their
aristocratic holiday as visitors at the house of some aristocratic friend.
So well had they played their cards in this respect that they seldom
failed altogether. In one year they had been the guests of a great marquis
quite in the north, and that had been a very glorious year. To talk of
Stackallan was indeed a thing of beauty. But in that year Mr. Hittaway had
made himself very useful in London. Since that they had been at delicious
shooting lodges in Ross and Inverness-shire, had visited a millionaire at
his palace amid the Argyle mountains, had been f?ted in a western island,
had been bored by a Dundee dowager, and put up with a Lothian laird. But
the thing had been almost always done, and the Hittaways were known as
people that went to Scotland. He could handle a gun, and was clever enough
never to shoot a keeper. She could read aloud, could act a little, could
talk or hold her tongue; and let her hosts be who they would, and as
mighty as you please, never caused them trouble by seeming to be out of
their circle and on that account requiring peculiar attention.
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