And as she instinctively dropped her glance before the barrage of interested stares, her bewilderment and protest went unnoticed and she merely looked like the slightly overcome heroine of the occasion.“Katherine ... Renner?” Paul’s father repeated the unfamiliar name on a note of stupefaction quite out of keeping with the confident way he had previously started to make the engagement announcement. “But I thought—”“Yes, father. But it doesn’t do to jump to conclusions,” his son told him with easy good humor. “I told you I hoped to become engaged this evening—” Katherine did glance up then, and noted the hard stare with which Paul dared his father to challenge that “—but I didn’t tell you to whom. That was why I had to make my own announcement. I couldn’t have you making embarrassing guesses in public.”“It’s sensationally sudden, isn’t it?” That was Malcolm speaking a little hoarsely beside Katherine.“But these things often are sudden, aren’t they?”
