Wonderful to relate, the high-spirited demoiselle was subdued by this rough courtship, and gave her hand to her determined cousin without further resistance; nor do we hear that he ever beat her again. Indeed, if he did, he was not likely to let their good vassals be aware of it; and, in very truth, they seem to have been considered as models of peace and happiness. But it is much to be suspected that her nature remained proud and vindictive; for no sooner had her husband become master of England, than she caused the unfortunate Brihtric, who had disdained her love, to be stripped of all his manors in Gloucestershire, including Fairford, Tewkesbury, and the rich meadows around, and threw him into Winchester Castle, where he died; while Domesday Book witnesses to her revenge, by showing that the lands once his belonged to Queen Matilda. The indication of character in a woman who had so little opportunity of independent action, is worth noting, as it serves to mark the spirit in which her children would be reared, and to explain why the sons so entirely fell short of all that was greatest and noblest in their father. The devotion, honor, and generosity, that made the iron of his composition bright as well as hard, was utterly wanting in them, or merely appeared in passing inconsistencies, and it is but too likely that they derived no gentler training from their mother. There were ten children, four sons and six daughters, but the names of these latter, are very difficult to distinguish, as Adela, Atheliza, Adelheid, or Alix, was a sort of feminine of Atheling, a Princess-Royal title, and was applied to most of the eldest daughters of the French and German-princes, or, when the senior was dead, or married, to the surviving eldest. Cecily, Matilda’s eldest daughter, was, even before her birth, decreed to be no Adela for whom contending potentates might struggle. She was to be the atonement for the parents’ hasty, unlicensed marriage, in addition to their two beautiful abbeys at Caen. When the Abbaye aux Dames was consecrated, the little girl was led by her father to the foot of the altar, and there presented as his offering. She was educated with great care by a very learned though somewhat dissipated priest, took the veil, and, becoming abbess, ruled her nuns for many years, well contented and much respected. The next sister was the Atheliza of the family, but her name was either Elfgiva or Agatha. She enjoys the distinction of being the only female portrait in her mother’s tapestry--except a poor woman escaping from a sacked town. She stands under a gateway, while Harold is riding forth with her father, in witness, perhaps, of her having been betrothed to Harold; or perhaps Matilda felt a mother’s yearning to commemorate the first of her flock who had been laid in the grave, for Elfgiva died a short time after the contract, which Harold would hardly have fulfilled, since he had at least one wife already at home.