affected to nearly the same extent.

From time to time the visitors had to give way to men who marched in single
file carrying what seemed to be huge cheeses, but the guide explained that
within these were cups, saucers, bowls, and basins, and men mounted on
ladders piled these yellow tubs up the walls of the ovens. When the
visitors had peeped into the huge interior, they were conducted to the
furnaces; and these were set in the oven's inner shell, which made a narrow
circular passage slanting inwards as it ascended like the neck of a
champagne bottle. The fires glared so furiously that they suggested many
impious thoughts to Lennox, and he proposed to ask the ministers if there
were any warmer corners in hell, and was with difficulty dissuaded by Kate,
about whose waist he had passed his arm. His constant whispering in her
ear, which had at first amused her, now irritated and annoyed her; other
emotions filled her mind with a vague tumult, and she longed to be left to
think in peace. She begged of him to keep quiet, and as they crossed one of
the yards she asked the guide if he could not go straight to the
painting-room. He replied that there was a regular order to be observed,
and insisted on marching them through two more rooms, and explaining fully
three or four more processes. Then, after begging them to be careful and to
hold the rail, he led them up a high staircase. The warning caused Kate a
thrill, for she remembered that every step of this staircase had been a
terror to her mother.

The room itself proved a little disappointing. The tables were not arranged
in quite the same way, and these alterations deprived her of the emotions
she had expected. Still it gave her a great deal of pleasure to point out
to Mr. Lennox where her mother used to work.

But to find the exact spot was not by any means easy. There were upwards of