Like a perfect daughter, she watched him, tried to discover
preferences of which he might not himself be aware, and often waited
upon him with her own hands.
There was an ancient building connected with the house, divided
now for many years into barn and dairy, but evidently the chapel
of the monastery: this Malcolm soon set about reconverting. It made
a lovely chapel--too large for the household, but not too large
for its congregation upon Wednesday evenings, when many of the
fishermen and their families, and not a few of the inhabitants of
the upper town, with occasionally several farm servants from the
neighbourhood, assembled to listen devoutly to the fervent and loving
expostulations and rousings, or the tender consolings and wise
instructions of the master, as every one called him. The hold he
had of their hearts was firm, and his influence on their consciences
far reaching.
When there was need of conference, or ground for any wide expostulation,
the marquis would call a meeting in the chapel; but this occurred
very seldom. Now and then the master, sometimes the marquis himself,
would use it for a course of lectures or a succession of readings
from some specially interesting book; and in what had been the
sacristy they gathered a small library for the use of the neighbourhood.
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