Trooper Browne had been on duty all night, slept through the morning, and now at two in the afternoon came hungry to the mess-room for luncheon. The tables were gone since daybreak, surgeons and nurses had taken possession, the pavement, the aisles, even the triforium gallery, were crowded with the beds of the sick and the dying taken from the streets. In the ante-chamber he found some biscuits, and with these and a glass of water fled to the guard-room. That beautiful gallery was at least unchanged, its precious columns of azurite and malachite reflected in the polished slabs of the floor. The alabaster stairs came up from the portico, and went on to the chambers of state, now turned into hospital wards and Government offices. One man was on guard, Sergeant Jack Branscombe, fat, lazy old Jack sole garrison of the Palace, and him Browne relieved that he might get his breakfast. So the trooper sat on a bench eating biscuits, and watched the endless procession of sufferers being carried past upon the stairway. One man on guard! Of the two hundred gentlemen-at-arms, and their two hundred orderlies, only seventy were left--all as brothers now--to ride with her Majesty. She would come back with her riders at four o'clock, tired out, and here on the table stood a gold cup, and a flagon of wine left by Miss Temple, for our Lady's refreshment. Stealthily Browne lifted the cup, and pressed his lips against the rim. Even as he did that a little chuckle sounded close at his elbow--so startlingly like our Lady's laugh that he set down the cup in haste. "Caught red-handed," said Tom of Lancaster, and sitting down on the bench, laid a white hand on Browne's knee. "My dear Browne, you must not poison her cup, even with kisses." Browne grinned nervously. "Good morning, sir," he said, his eyes on Lancaster's deathly white face, "the doctor said you'd be in bed for months." "Doctor's a fool," said Lancaster, then very faintly added--"Give me some of that wine." Browne drank the water in his glass, and filled it with wine from the flagon. "Here, sir." "Drop that 'sir,'" said the young Prince, then with a sigh as he set down the empty glass, "How is she to-day?" "Slept heartily these four nights, so Miss Temple says. She looks herself again since you came, Prince, with your message." "Prince! I wish you fellows would drop that rot, and let me be a trooper. My name's Tom, and I'm as good as any man in the crowd. So the message cheered her up?" "Saved her reason, I think." "Browne," the Prince turned round with a short, sharp laugh, "you're in love with her. Bah, you flush like a girl--of course, you're in love with her. So am I, man, and the rest of the fellows are just as bad or worse. What's the use of trying to hide what hurts. Does it make the thing hurt less? She's not for us.