Chapter I: Front Matter

_A Marriage
Under the Terror_

_By_
_Patricia Wentworth_

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
Knickerbocker Press
1910

COPYRIGHT, 1910
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Published, April, 1910
Reprinted, May, 1910

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

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To _A Marriage Under the Terror_ has been awarded in England the first prize in the Melrose Novel Competition, a competition that was not restricted to first stories. The distinguished literary reputation of the three judges--Mrs. Flora Annie Steel, Miss Mary Cholmondeley, and Mrs. Henry de la Pasture--was a guaranty alike to the contestants and to the public that the story selected as the winner would without question be fully entitled to that distinction. In consequence, many authors of experience entered the contest, with the result that the number of manuscripts submitted was greater than that in the competition previously conducted by Mr. Melrose.

Among such a number of good stories individual taste must always play an important part in the decision. It is, therefore, no small tribute to the transcendent interest of the winning novel that, though the judges worked independently, each selected _A Marriage Under the Terror_ as the most distinctive novel in the group.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. A Purloined Cipher
II. A Forced Entrance
III. Shut out by a Prison Wall
IV. The Terror Let Loose
V. A Carnival of Blood
VI. A Doubtful Safety
VII. The Inner Conflict
VIII. An Offer of Friendship
IX. The Old Ideal and the New
X. The Fate of a King
XI. The Irrevocable Vote
XII. Separation
XIII. Disturbing Insinuations
XIV. A Dangerous Acquaintance
XV. Sans Souci
XVI. An Unwelcome Visitor
XVII. Distressing News
XVIII. A Trial and a Wedding
XIX. The Barrier
XX. A Royalist Plot
XXI. A New Environment
XXII. At Home and Afield
XXIII. Return of Two Fugitives
XXIV. Burning of the Chateau
XXV. Escape of Two Madcaps
XXVI. A Dying Woman
XXVII. Betrayal
XXVIII. Inmates of the Prison
XXIX. Through Darkness to Light

A MARRIAGE UNDER THE TERROR