The Long Way by Mary Imlay Taylor

Rachel's engagement to Belhaven was announced by Astry, before twelve o'clock the following day, in the library.

Matrimonial engagements do not, as a rule, occur during week-end parties without some preliminary symptoms. The entire family might be taken by measles unawares much more easily than to be wholly surprised by an engagement. This absence of preliminary symptoms, in fact of any symptoms at all, had the effect of making Astry's announcement as violently abrupt as an explosion of nitroglycerine.