Now when he came home invalided, she had the
same craving; but what she craved for came her way very rarely. He
would laugh and talk with her as with other people. But that
exquisite brightness of eye and lip, which seemed to be for one
person only, and, when it came, to lift that person to the seventh
heaven, she waited for in vain.
Then he went back to France, and in due course came the Somme.
Aubrey Mannering went through the whole five months without a
scratch. He came back with a D.S.O. and a Staff appointment for a
short Christmas leave, everybody, except his father, turning out to
welcome him as the local hero. Then, for a time, he went to
Aldershot as the head of an Officers' School there, and was able to
come down occasionally to Chetworth or Mannering.
During that first Christmas leave he paid several visits to
Chetworth, and evidently felt at home there. To Lady Chicksands,
whom most people regarded as a tiresome nonentity, he was
particularly kind and courteous. It seemed to give him positive
pleasure to listen to her garrulous housekeeping talk, or to hold
her wool for her while she wound it.
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