***




Produced by Al Haines.


                              _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




                             Advertisement


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



                               CHAPTER I

                           A PURLOINED CIPHER


It was high noon on a mid-August morning of the year 1792, but Jeanne,
the waiting-maid, had only just set the coffee down on the small table
within the ruelle of Mme de Montargis' magnificent bed.  Great ladies
did not trouble themselves to rise too early in those days, and a beauty
who has been a beauty for twenty years was not more anxious then than
now to face the unflattering freshness of the morning air.  Laure de
Montargis stirred in the shadow of her brocaded curtains, put out a
white hand for the cup, sipped from it, murmured that the coffee was
cold, and pushed it from her with a fretful exclamation that made Jeanne
frown as she drew the tan- curtains and let in the mid-day
glare. Madame had been up late, Madame had lost at faro, and her
servants would have to put up with Heaven alone knew how many megrims in
consequence.

"Madame suffers?" inquired Jeanne obsequiously, but with pursed lips.

The lady closed her eyes.  Laying her head back against the delicately
embroidered pillows, she indicated by a gesture that her sufferings
might be taken for granted.

"Madame has the migraine?" suggested the soft, rather false-sounding
voice.  "Madame will not receive?"

"Heavens! girl, how you pester me," said the Marquise sharply.

Then, falling again to a languid tone, "Is there any one there?"

Jeanne smiled with malicious, averted face as she poured rose-water from
a silver ewer into a Sevres bowl, and watched it rise, dimpling, to the
flower-wreathed brim.

"There is M. le Vicomte as usual, Madame, and Mme la Comtesse de Maille,
who, learning that Madame was but now awakened, told me that she would
wait whilst I inquired if Madame would see her."

"Good Heavens! what an hour to come," said the lady, with a peevish air.

"Madame la Comtesse seemed much moved.  One would say something had
occurred," said Jeanne.

The Marquise raised her head sharply.

"--And you stand chattering there?  Just Heaven! The trial that it is to
have an imbecile about one! The glass quickly, and the rouge, and the
lace for my head.  No, not that rouge,--the new sort that Isidore
brought yesterday;--arrange these two curls,--now a little powder.
Fool! what powder is this?"

"Madame's own," submitted Jeanne meekly.

The suffering lady raised herself and dealt the girl a sounding box on
the ear.

"Idiot! did I not tell you I had tired of the perfume, and that in
future the white lilac powder was the only one I would use?  Did I not
tell you?"

"Yes, Madame"--but there was a spark beneath the waiting-maid's
discreetly dropped lids.

The Marquise de Montargis sat bolt upright, and contemplated her
reflection in the wide silver mirror which Jeanne was steadying.  Her
passion had brought a little flush to her cheeks, and she noted
approvingly that the colour became her.

"Put the rouge just here, and here, Jeanne," she ordered, her anger
subsiding;--then, with a fresh outburst--"Imbecile, not so much!  One
does not have the complexion of a milkmaid when one is in bed with the
migraine; just a shade here now, a nuance.  That will do; go and bring
them in."

She drew a rose- satin wrap about her, and posed her head, in
its cloud of delicate lace, carefully. Her bed was as gorgeous as it
well might be.  Long curtains of rosy brocade fell about it, and a
coverlid of finest needlework, embroidered with bunches of red and white
roses on a white satin ground, was thrown across it.  The carved pillars
showed cupids pelting one another with flowers plucked from the garlands
that wreathed their naked chubbiness.

Madame de Montargis herself had been a beauty for twenty years, but a
life of light pleasures, and a heart incapable of experiencing more than
a momentary emotion had combined to leave her face as unlined and almost
as lovely as when Paris first proclaimed her its reigning queen of
beauty.

She was eminently satisfied with her own looks as she turned languidly
on her soft pillows to greet her friends.

Mme de Maille bent and embraced her; M. le Vicomte Selincourt stooped
and kissed her gracefully extended hand.  Jeanne brought seats, and
after a few polite inquiries Mme de Maille plunged into her news.

"Ma chere amie!" she exclaimed, "I come to tell you the good news.  My
daughter and her husband have reached England in safety."  Tears filled
her soft blue eyes, and she raised them to the ceiling with a gesture
that would have been affected had her emotion been less evidently
sincere.

"Ah! chere Comtesse, a thousand felicitations!"

"My dear, I have been on thorns, I have not slept, I have not eaten, I
have wept rivers, I have said more prayers in a month than my confessor
has ever before induced me to say in a year.  First I thought they would
be stopped at the barriers, and then--then I pictured to myself a
hundred misfortunes, a thousand inconveniences! I saw my Adele ill,
fainting from the fatigues of the road; I imagined assaults of brigands,
shipwrecks, storms,--in short, everything of the most unfortunate,--ah!
my dear friends, you do not know what a mother suffers,--and now I have
the happiness of receiving a letter from my dearest Adele,--she is well;
she is contented.  They have been received with the greatest amiability,
and, my friends, I am too happy."

"And your happiness is that of your friends," bowed the Vicomte.

Mme de Montargis' congratulations were polite, if a trifle perfunctory.
The convenances demanded that one should simulate an interest in the
affairs of one's acquaintances, but in reality, and at this hour of the
day, how they did bore one!  And Marie de Maille, with her soft airs,
and that insufferable Adele of hers, whom she had always spoilt