When they had looked at the corbelled chimney-piece they returned to the hall, where his eye was caught anew by a large map that he had conned for some time when alone, without being able to divine the locality represented. It was called ‘General Plan of the Town,’ and showed streets and open spaces corresponding with nothing he had seen in the county. ‘Is that town here?’ he asked. ‘It is not anywhere but in Paula’s brain; she has laid it out from her own design. The site is supposed to be near our railway station, just across there, where the land belongs to her. She is going to grant cheap building leases, and develop the manufacture of pottery.’ ‘Pottery--how very practical she must be!’ ‘O no! no!’ replied Miss De Stancy, in tones showing how supremely ignorant he must be of Miss Power’s nature if he characterized her in those terms. ‘It is GREEK pottery she means--Hellenic pottery she tells me to call it, only I forget. There is beautiful clay at the place, her father told her: he found it in making the railway tunnel. She has visited the British Museum, continental museums, and Greece, and Spain: and hopes to imitate the old fictile work in time, especially the Greek of the best period, four hundred years after Christ, or before Christ--I forget which it was Paula said.... O no, she is not practical in the sense you mean, at all.’ ‘A mixed young lady, rather.’ Miss De Stancy appeared unable to settle whether this new definition of her dear friend should be accepted as kindly, or disallowed as decidedly sarcastic. ‘You would like her if you knew her,’ she insisted, in half tones of pique; after which she walked on a few steps. ‘I think very highly of her,’ said Somerset. ‘And I! And yet at one time I could never have believed that I should have been her friend. One is prejudiced at first against people who are reported to have such differences in feeling, associations, and habit, as she seemed to have from mine. But it has not stood in the least in the way of our liking each other. I believe the difference makes us the more united.’ ‘It says a great deal for the liberality of both,’ answered Somerset warmly. ‘Heaven send us more of the same sort of people! They are not too numerous at present.’