One of the oldest rules of the tabloid newspaper game is that “if it bleeds, it leads,” meaning a violent, bloody death automatically becomes the top story because readers love that sort of thing even though they claim they hate it.

But the violent death Sunday in the seventh episode of the final Downton Abbey season was not the big story.

Sure, Charlie Rogers’s death in the fiery inferno of his overturned roadster was a tragedy that sent a wave of shock, grief and depression over the entire Crawley family, especially Lady Mary.

It was, however, an auto accident. We’ve been there before. So has Mary (Michelle Dockery, top.) Life will, one way or another, soldier on.

What will not go on, we learned with indisputable certainty Sunday, was the Downton Abbey way of life.

While the Crawley family was out of the house, most of them attending the Brooklands race in which Charlie died, Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Carson checked on the living room where the Crawleys often assemble for family drama and cocktail conversation.

As they meandered past a red couch, Mrs. Hughes told Mr. Carson (Jim Carter, Phyllis Logan, right) they should sit for a moment.

Naturally he recoiled in horror. Sitting down on family furniture in a room where for 50 years he has done nothing but obediently stand? That’s like sneaking up behind Lord Grantham at dinner, saying his soup looks good, then reaching over his shoulder and sticking a finger in it to take a taste.

It’s a violation of everything Carson’s entire life has stood for, a repudiation of every tradition in a millennium of understood boundaries between those who own and those who serve.

Then, like Adam after Eve held out that fateful apple in the Garden of Eden, he sat down anyway.

It’s over.

Carson and Mrs. Hughes only sat for perhaps five seconds, but those five seconds mark the dividing line between the Britain that was, which is what Downton Abbey has been all about, and the Britain that will be.

Mrs. Hughes, whose faithful servitude has matched Mr. Carson’s, remarked that the sofa was comfortable.

Next thing you know, there’s a guillotine in Trafalgar Square.

Anyhow, back to the car wreck.

Henry Talbot had invited the whole Crawley clan to Brooklands, the track where he and Charlie would be racing.

The family’s enthusiasm was not unanimous, but Lord Grantham was so happy to finally be out of bed that he would have leapt at the chance to go watch postal clerks sort the mail.

Henry’s presence persuaded the reluctant Mary. Edith invited her semi-new editor, Laura Edmunds, which was sort of inexplicable except that Laura did fall into a brief conversation with Branson. Y’think?

To be honest, Branson was more focused on salivating over the cars. One more lap and he would have jumped the rail and vaulted into a car going 60 miles an hour, just to drive it.

In any event, the drivers were running around the winding track and by the third or fourth lap Lord Grantham was caught up enough to say he saw something “gallant and daring” about auto racing.

That was moments before everything went silent, which meant something terrible had happened elsewhere on the course.

Everyone raced to the scene to find Henry on his stomach trying desperately and hopelessly to pull Charlie out from underneath his burning car.

Mary saw Henry (Mathew Goode, right) was all right and seemed relieved, though still shaken. She later found Henry alone, lamenting all the times he teased Charlie and prodded him to go faster.

Mary pointed out that Charlie had done the same to Henry.

“But I didn’t die,” said Henry, “and he did.”

Mary told him not to feel guilty. When he started to say something else, Mary said, “Let’s not do any of this, not now.”

Back at Downton several hours later, after Lord Grantham and everyone else except Branson had now decided auto racing was ”an awful business,” Mary got a call from Henry, who said he couldn’t sleep until he could hear her voice “and know where we are headed.”

Henry’s whole goal in asking the Crawley to the race, of course, had been to make them more comfortable about him despite the fact he was several levels below Mary on the social and financial depth chart.

His concern was not unfounded. Even Anna, who wouldn’t speak ill of a zombie, suggested to Lady Mary that she and Henry might not be “a fit.”

Charlie’s death wasn’t exactly the takeaway with which Henry wanted his guests to leave.

Nonetheless, he forged ahead with Mary. Charlie’s death reminded him, he told her, “we don’t have a moment to waste, you and I.”

Actually, she replied, you have a lifetime to waste.

“We’re not meant to be together, Henry,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to give up racing. I don’t want you to give up anything but me.”

Then she hung up.

Great. Now she’s only got two more episodes to find a new suitor.

Except, wait! Branson (Allen Leech, right) is back being the philosopher king.

Sure, he told Mary, people get hurt racing cars. But, he added, “Being hurt is part of being alive.”

Unless you’re Charlie. Or Matthew.

Branson pressed his case: “That’s no reason to give up on a man who’s right for you.”

Branson will drive one of Henry’s cars yet.

Edith’s romantic news was more encouraging, though that didn’t turn out to be a done deal, either. Bertie proposed to her as they snuggled up on a couch – no Carson or Mrs. Hughes in sight – and she seemed quite happy about it.

She did not, however, say yes. She said that if she married, she would have to keep Marigold. Bertie looked slightly puzzled and said sure.

Then Edith said she’d give him her final answer soon, which we viewers know means as soon as she figures out whether she can tell him the truth about Marigold.

Lord Grantham was less conflicted about new additions to the family. Violet bought him a new Yellow Lab puppy, which produced his greatest wave of joy since Miss Bunting left.

Violet (Dame Maaggies Smith, right) was on a roll Sunday night, proving that irritation brings out the best in her.

She told Isobel that she was still sufficiently annoyed about Cora taking her position at the hospital that she intended to go away on a European trip.

“My reason for traveling is to make myself eager to come home,” Violet said. “A month among the French should do it.”

But Violet’s tour de force Sunday was a meeting with Miss Cruikshank, the fiancée of Lord Merton’s obnoxious son Larry. Miss Cruikshank previously told Isobel that not everyone in the family shared Larry’s distaste for her, that is to say, perhaps Isobel should reconsider Lord Merton’s marriage proposal.

Isobel seemed to be doing so, which motivated Violet to visit Miss Cruikshank and tell her that her cynical game was transparent. “You want a free nurse,” said Violet, “to take a tiresome old man off your hands.”

Our last glimpse of Miss Cruikshank revealed a tiny pool of barely quivering protoplasm.

Downstairs on Sunday, Barrow tried to make nice and joined the group for a picnic even as Mr. Carson all but threw his belongings out onto the courtyard.

At the picnic Andy was forced to reveal that despite Barrow’s tutoring, he still couldn’t read. In one of those magic coincidences, the local school headmaster happened to be attending the picnic and told Andy he could teach him. Once more, Barrow’s services will apparently no longer be required.

The headmaster had better news for Molesley, who turns out to be an academic wizard in a footman’s uniform. Molesley was offered a position at the school, which will mean leaving service.

That’s good for Molesley, who told Daisy he was never going to be promoted to butler anyway, and it could help Barrow, since it takes another body off the payroll.

When Mrs. Hughes wasn’t talking Mr. Carson into abandoning all his principles for five seconds on the couch, she and Mrs. Patmore were teaming up to exact revenge for his constant complaints about Mrs. Hughes’s cooking.

Mrs. Hughes wrapped a bandage around her hand and announced she couldn’t lift anything, which meant that Mr. Carson would have to cook their meal himself.

By the time she’d run him through all the preparations and timing and ancillary details, he could barely lift the correct fork to eat the dinner, which didn’t look all that appetizing anyway.

When they finished, Mrs. Hughes sympathetically told him that if he were tired, he could do the dishes in the morning.

Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol, right) herself was involved in the night’s most curious moment.

She welcomed the first boarders to her guesthouse and cooked them breakfast. As she left to walk back to Downton, a man hidden in the front bushes watched her and seemed to be jotting down notes.

Someone put a tail on Mrs. Patmore? Seriously? Hey you, notepad guy. She’s not the one who sat on the couch.