Of Charles Jacomb it needs only be said at present that he had recently been transferred to an extremely High Church at Brighton from an equally High Church in a large, populous, and poor parish in the south-east of London, where the semi-Catholic services had succeeded in attracting a considerable number of people, who otherwise would probably have gone to no church at all. It was his description of his work in this neighbourhood that had won for him the respect and warm esteem of Nan Beresford. The work was hard. The services were almost continuous; there was a great deal of visitation to be got through; in these labours he naturally ran against cases of distress that no human being could withstand; and he had 60 pounds a year. Moreover, there were no delicate compensations such as attend the labours of curates in some more favoured places. There was not--Mr. Jacomb emphatically remarked--there was not a gentleman in the parish. When he went to Brighton he had considerably less work, and a great deal more of dinners and society, and pleasant attentions. And Mr. Jacomb, while he was a devoted, earnest, and hard-working priest, was also an Englishman, and liked his dinner, and that was how he became acquainted with the Beresfords, and gradually grew to be an intimate friend of the family. His attentions to Nan were marked, and she knew it. She knew, although he had said nothing to her about it, that he wished her to be his wife; and though she would rather have been enabled to devote her life to some good end in some other way, was not this the only way open to her? By herself, she was so helpless to do anything. So many of her friends seemed to cultivate religion as a higher species of emotion--a sort of luxurious satisfaction that ended with themselves. Nan wanted to do something. If Mr. Jacomb had still been in the south-east of London, working on his 60 pounds a year, Nan would have had no doubt as to what she ought to do.