Far from being buried in the past it remained the chief factor in her life, colouring and shaping the whole of her future.
Aunt Aggie could at any moment dip into a kind of sequel to that early history.

In the sequel the Archdeacon's wife was, of course, to die; but, owing to circumstances which Aunt Aggie had not yet thoroughly worked out, that unhappy lady was first to undergo tortures in some remote locality, nursed devotedly--poor thing--by Aunt Aggie.

The result of her ministrations was never in doubt from the first.

The Archdeacon's wife was, of course, to succumb, calling down blessings on the devoted stranger at her bedside, with the enigmatical smile which spoke of some sacred sorrow.
Aunt Aggie had shed many delicious tears over that deathbed scene, and the chastened grief of the saintly Archdeacon, quite overshadowed by his boundless gratitude to herself.

At this crisis his overwhelming desolation wrung from him--with gross disloyalty to the newly dead--a few disjointed sentences which revealed only too clearly how unsuited to him his wife had been, how little she had understood him, how lonely his wedded life had been.