Why is the html from a ajax call different when inspecting data and data as Jquery object

I'm trying to refresh some part of a page with an async call with JQuery. Part of the code you can see here.

success: function (data, status, xhr) {
              var $result = $(data);.....etc

Now when I inspect 'data' and '$result' the HMTL-strings are not the same. For example:

Snippet from data:

<div class='divLoading'>
        <img src='/Content/Icons/load.png' />
    </div>
    <div class='divGridContent'>
        <div id="divGridMenu" class="divGridMenu">
            <div id="divGridMenuContent" class="divGridMenuContent">

This is 'good' HTML, but when I inspect $result:

Snippet from $result:

<DIV class=divLoading><IMG src开发者_如何学运维="/Content/Icons/load.png"> </DIV>
<DIV class=divGridContent>
<DIV id=divGridMenu class=divGridMenu>
<DIV id=divGridMenuContent class=divGridMenuContent>

How can this be?

I think it's because of this statement:

var $result = $(data);

This will turn $result in a jquery object not an html string. This will probable return a normal html string:

var #result = $(data).html();

But in that case, you could also this:

var $result = data;