, whose name sometimes appears in the Admiralty
appointments in the newspapers. Her mind was set on far other and
higher things. It was the churches and pictures of Italy that began
it--the frescoes in the cloisters, the patient sculpture, telling of
the devotion of lives, even the patient needlework on the altars. She
seemed to breathe the atmosphere of an Age of Faith. And when, after a
long period of delightful reverie abroad, and mystical enjoyment of
music and architecture and painting, all combining to place their
noblest gifts at the service of religion, she returned to her familiar
home in Brighton, some vague desire still remained her heart that she
might be able to make something beautiful of her life, something less
selfish and worldly than the lives of most she saw around her. And it
so happened that among her friends those who seemed to her most earnest
in their faith and most ready to help the poor and the suffering--those
who had the highest ideals of existence and strove faithfully to reach
these--were mainly among the High Church folk. Insensibly she drew
nearer and nearer to them. She took no interest at all in any of the
controversies then raging about the position of the Ritualists in the
Church of England; it was persons, not principles, that claimed her
regard; and when she saw that So-and-so and So-and-so in her own small
circle of friends were living, or striving to live, pure and noble and
self-sacrificing lives, she threw in her lot with them, and she was
warmly welcomed. For Nan was popular in a way. All that acerbity of
her younger years had now ripened into a sort of sweet and tolerant
good-humour. Tom Beresford called her a Papist, and angrily told her
to give up 'that incense-dodge;' but he was very fond of her all the
same, and honoured her alone with his confidence, and would have no one
say any ill of her. Nay, for her sake he consented to be civil to the
Rev. Mr. Jacomb.

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