ret
sentiments of resentment and revenge.

He had, besides, other causes of complaint against his father, more
serious still. When he was a very young child, his father, according to
the custom of the times, had espoused him to the daughter and heiress of
a neighboring earl, a child like himself. Her name was Margaret. The
earldom which this little Margaret was to inherit was Maine. It was on
the frontiers of Normandy, and it was a rich and valuable possession. It
was a part of the stipulation of the marriage contract that the young
bride's domain was to be delivered to the father of the bridegroom, to
be held by him until the bridegroom should become of age, and the
marriage should be fully consummated. In fact, the getting possession of
this rich inheritance, with a prospect of holding it so many years, was
very probably the principal end which William had in view in contracting
for a matrimonial union so very premature.

If this was, in reality, William's plan, it resulted, in the end, even
more favorably than he had anticipated; for the little heiress died a
short time after her inheritance was put into the possession of her
father-in-law. There was nobody to demand a restoration of it, and so
William continued to hold it until his son, the bridegroom, became of
age. Robert then demanded it, contending that it was justly his. William
refused to surrender it. He maintained that what had passed between his
son in his infancy, and the little Margaret, was not a marriage, but
only a betrothment--a contract for a future marriage, which was to take
place when the parties were of age--that, since Margaret's death
prevented the consummation of the union, Robert was never her husband,
and could not, consequently, acquire the rights of a husband. The lands,
therefore, ought manifestly, he said, to remain in the hands of her
guardian, and whatever rights any other persons might have, claiming to
succeed Margaret as her natural heirs, it was plain that his son could
have no title whatever.

However satisfactory this reasoning might be to the mind of William,
Robert was only exasperated by it. He looked upon the case as one of
extreme injustice and oppression on the part of his father, who, not
content, he said, with his own enormous possessions, must add to them by
robbing his own son. In this opinion Robert's mother, Matilda, agreed
with him. As for William Rufus and Henry, they paid little attention to
the argument, but we