This absence of impatience or reproach paralysed her. Once when Gretchen had been called away in the middle of the duet, she sat vacantly staring at the keys for a moment.
All at once, with a sudden frantic movement, she half rose from her seat at the piano, a look of positive terror in her eyes.
"If only she would say something—anything! I can't breathe when she looks at me," she panted breathlessly.
When Gretchen came back she was patiently practising a bar over and over again.
"Try it once more, Cecily," Gretchen said, gazing straight before her out of the window. "It isn't right."
Mrs. Armstrong found her cousin really invaluable. She was as clever with her fingers as with her brains, and when Cecily began to go out, she not only designed, but also made most of her charming gowns for evening wear.
She always helped her to dress for dances—dressed her, in fact—for Cecily generally stood quite passive to have her hair arranged, her flowers fastened in, or the folds of her gown artistically draped.
On these occasions Gretchen never failed to praise her beauty openly and with an air of impartial criticism, and then Cecily winced and trembled a little, but said nothing.
"I have a comfortable home, but I earn my living," wrote Gretchen to a friend, when she had been with the Armstrongs about three months.
It was with real concern that a day or two after her daughter's engagement had been finally arranged Mrs. Armstrong learnt that Gretchen was thinking of leaving her.
"Cecily will be broken-hearted," she exclaimed plaintively; "and she won't be married just yet, you know. Besides, why should you go at all? I shall want you more than ever then."
But Gretchen was firm.
