Using delay with HTML or text setting doesn't work

I have strange problem with the delay function here using the HTML function with it.

I set an HTML text by using $( '#element').html( 'Hello World');

After setting the text I want to get this text disappear in 3 seconds.

So next line I wrote:

$('#element').delay( 3000).html( '&nbsp');

This one doesn't work, it sets the HTML to &nbsp without waiting the 3 seconds, it looks like jQuery is skipping the delay function. Using this with fadeOut for example works fine. I guess this has something to do with this queue thing in delay.

But why doesn't this work. Its a pretty simple, wait 3 seconds then run the HTML function.