She is engaged to be married, but the gentleman who has the honour of being her intended sposo----' 'Intended sposo!' said Charley, expressing by his upturned lip a withering amount of scorn--'how well I know the fellow's low attempts at wit! That's the editor himself--that's my literary papa.

I know him as well as though I had seen him at it.' Katie and Mrs.Woodward exchanged furtive glances, but neither of them moved a muscle of her face.
'But the gentleman who has the honour of being her intended sposo,' continued Mrs.Woodward.
'What the devil's a sposo ?' said Uncle Bat, who was sitting in an arm-chair with a handkerchief over his head.
'Why, you're not a sposo, Uncle Bat,' said Linda; 'but Harry is, and so is Charley.' 'Oh, I see,' said the captain; 'it's a bird with his wings clipped.' 'But the gentleman who has the honour of being her intended sposo----' again read Mrs.Woodward.
'Now I'm sure I'm speaking by the card,' said Charley, 'when I say that there is not another man in London who could have written that line, and who would have used so detestable a word.
I think I remember his using it in one of his lectures to me; indeed I'm sure I do.

Sposo! I should like to tweak his nose oh!' 'Are you going to let me go on ?' said Mrs.Woodward--'her intended sposo'-- Charley gave a kick with his foot and satisfied himself with that--'is determined to have nothing to say to her in the matrimonial line till she has revealed to him this secret which he thinks concerns his own honour.' 'There, I knew he'd tell it.' 'He has not told it yet,' said Norman.
'The lady, however, is obdurate, wonderfully so, of course, seeing that she is the world's last wonder, and so the match is broken off.

But the secret is of such a nature that the lady's invincible objection to revealing it is bound up with the fact of her being a promised bride.' 'I wonder he didn't say sposa,' said Charley.
'I never thought of that,' said Katie.
Mrs.Woodward and Linda looked at her, but Charley did not, and her blunder passed by unnoticed.
'Now that she is free from her matrimonial bonds, she is free also to tell the secret; and indeed the welfare both of the gentleman and of the lady imperiously demands that it should be told.

Should he marry her, he is destined to learn it after his marriage; should he not marry her, he may hear it at any time.
She sends for him and tells him, not the first of these facts, by doing which all difficulty would have at once been put an end to--' 'It is quite clear he has never read the story, quite clear,' said Charley.
'She tells him only the last, viz., that as they are now strangers he may know the secret; but that when once known it will raise a barrier between them that no years, no penance, no sorrow on his part, no tenderness on hers, can ever break down.
She then asks him--will he hear the secret ?' 'She does not ask any such thing,' said Charley; 'the letter that contains it has been already sent to him.