‘Gracious, archdeacon; do pray hold your tongue.’

’But it stands to reason that her going will be a great relief to him.  What has she done for him?  She has made him contemptible to everybody in the diocese by her interference, and his life has been a burden to him through her violence.’

‘Is that the way you carry out your proverb De mortuis?’ asked Mrs Grantly.

’The proverb of De mortuis is founded on humbug.  Humbug out of doors is necessary.  It would not do for you and me to go into the High Street just now and say what we think about Mrs Proudie; but I don’t suppose that kind of thing need to be kept up in here—­so uncomfortable that I cannot believe that anyone will regret her.  Dear me!  Only to think that she has gone!  You may as well give me my tea.’

I do not think that Mrs Grantly’s opinion differed much from that expressed by her husband, or that she was, in truth, the least offended by the archdeacon’s plain speech.  But it must be remembered that there was probably no house in the diocese in which Mrs Proudie had been so thoroughly hated as she had been at the Plumstead rectory.  There had been hatred in the deanery; but the hatred at the deanery had been mild in comparison with the hatred at Plumstead.  The archdeacon was a sound friend; but he was also a sound enemy.  From the very arrival of the Proudies at Barchester, Mrs Proudie had thrown down her gauntlet to him, and he had not been slow in picking it up.  The war had been internecine, and each had given the other terrible wounds.  It had been understood that there should be no quarter, and there had been none.  His enemy was now dead, and the archdeacon could not bring himself to adopt before his wife the namby-pamby everyday decency of speaking well of one of whom he had ever thought ill, or expressing regret when no regret could be felt.  ‘May all her sins be forgiven her,’ said Mrs Grantly.  ‘Amen,’ said the archdeacon.  There was something in the tone of his Amen which thoroughly implied that it was uttered only on the understanding that her departure from the existing world was to be regarded as an unmitigated good, and that she should, at any rate, never come back again to Barchester.

When Lady Lufton heard the tidings, she was not so bold in speaking of it as was her friend the archdeacon.  ‘Mrs Proudie dead!,’ she said to her daughter-in-law.  This was some hours after the news had reached the house, and when the fact of the poor lady’s death had been fully recognised.  ‘What will he do without her?’

‘The same as other men do,’ said the young Lady Lufton.

’But, my dear, he is not the same as other men.  He is not at all like other men.  No doubt she was a virago, a woman who could not control her temper for a moment!  No doubt she had led him a terrible life!  I have often pitied him with all my heart.  But, nevertheless, she was useful to him.  I suppose she was useful to him.  I can hardly believe that Mrs Proudie is dead.  Had he gone, it would have seemed so much more natural.  Poor woman.  I daresay she had her good points.’  The reader will be pleased to remember that the Luftons had ever been strong partisans on the side of the Grantlys.