Day by day as the thick waters subsided did the search continue along the devastated banks until the dark Derwent, rolling its great volume of water into the Trent, barred further passage, and made the quest hopeless. A silken scarf caught in a bush, a broken lance and pennon, a battered casque, a saddle-bow, were all the relics found of father, bridegrooms, page. Lady Bellamont was borne down by the shock. Avice drooped like a broken lily; only Idonea seemed capable of thought or action. The subsidence of the flood brought spurring in the more prudent party to comfort their own wives and daughters, along with the downcast esquires to tell the needless tale. There was no consoling Lady Bellamont. She seemed to take the triple loss to her own heart, and grieve for her daughters as much as for herself. In vain the prior offered such consolation as his faith afforded. She sat like a stone, rigid and immovable; would take no sustenance whatever. The tears shed over her by Idonea and Avice seemed to petrify as they fell rather than melt. Their affliction but intensified her own. “If they had died in battle as brave men should, we might have borne it bravely,” she said, at last; “but to be slain by the cold, cruel, treacherous waters in the height of joy and hope, almost within hail of home, it is too terrible, too terrible, prior; I cannot be resigned. And for my crushed roses—orphaned, widowed, ere they became wives—it is too much; I cannot survive it.” And before that month was out the twin-sisters were left to weep out their tears in each other’s arms, and bear the fresh blow as best they might, with only the good prior to watch and guard them in their orphanhood, and lead them to bow meekly to the inscrutable decrees of heaven. There was William Harpur willing to do the co-heiresses suit and service, and leave his own estate, a mile or so away, to the care of his reeve, whilst he administered affairs at the hall, but neither the prior nor the sisters cared for his interference, and when the old retainers, with the seneschal at their head, came in a body at the prior’s summons to swear fealty to the ladies Bellamont, and Idonea accepted their homage for herself and her sweet sister, as one born to command, he turned away to bite his nails in displeasure, and quitted the hall before the sun went down. But though Idonea could order the household, and the seneschal could keep the retainers in order, and the reeve overlook the villeins and lands, nothing seemed to rouse the drooping Avice, or remove the more rebellious sorrow that mutely burned on the cheeks and in the eyes of Idonea.