The Rev. George Holland was a good-looking man of perhaps a year or two over thirty. He did not come of a very good family--a fact which probably accounted for his cleverness at Oxford and in the world. He was a Fellow of his college, though he had not been appointed rector of St. Chad’s for this reason. The appointment, as is well known (in the Church, at any rate), is the gift of the Earl of Earlscourt, and it so happened that, when at college together, George Holland had saved the young man who a year or two afterward became Earl of Earlscourt from a very great misfortune. The facts of the case were these: Tommy Trebovoir, as he was then, had made up his mind to marry a lady whose piquant style of beauty made the tobacconist’s shop where she served the most popular in town. By the exercise of a great deal of diplomacy and the expenditure of a little money, Mr. Holland brought about a match between her and quite another man--a man who was not even on a subsidiary path to a peerage, and whose only connection with the university was due to his hiring out horses to those whom he called the “young gents.” Tommy was so indignant with his friend for the part he had played in this transaction he ceased to speak to him, and went the length of openly insulting him. Six years afterward, when he had become Earl of Earlscourt, and had espoused the daughter of a duke,--a lady who was greatly interested in the advance of temperance,--he had presented George Holland with the living at St. Chad’s. People then said that Lord Earlscourt was a lesser fool than some of his acts suggested. Others said that the Rev. George Holland had never been a fool, though he had been a Fellow of his college. They were right. George Holland knew that it was a troublesome process becoming a good clergyman, so he determined to become a good preacher instead. In the course of a year he had become probably the best-known preacher (legitimate, not Dissenting) in London, and that, too, without annoying the church-wardens of St. Chad’s by drawing crowds of undesirable listeners to crush their way into the proprietary sittings, and to join in the singing and responses, and to do other undesirable acts. No, he only drew to the church the friends of the said holders, whose contributions to the offertory were exemplary. His popularity within a certain circle was great; but, as Lord Earlscourt was heard to say, “He never played to the pit.” He was invited to speak to a resolution at a Mansion House meeting to express indignation at the maintenance of the opium traffic in China. He was also invited by the Countess of Earlscourt to appear on the platform to meet the deputation of Chinese who represented the city meeting held at Pekin in favor of local option in England; for the great national voice of China had pronounced in favor of local option in England. Shortly afterward he met Phyllis Ayrton, and had asked her to marry him, and she had consented.