CHAPTER TWELVEEvery now and then she stopped and bent to inspect a chair or a picture frame for dust, conscientiously performing her duties and yet knowing that it was all a pretence. She had another reason for moving about the house one that she was half-ashamed about. It was curiosity about The Priory’s former owner and Mistress, Norman Mitcham’s wife. Fleur’s thoughts were continually on Lady Cynthia Ashwin, but why she could not tell. She found herself thinking about her, wondering what she had been like and why she had married Norman Mitcham only to leave him and by her departure make herself an exile from her home and from all that was intimately connected with the history of her family. For Fleur had learnt now that it was not Sir Norman’s good taste that she had admired the fir