As before the French Revolution there were almost none of the ruling classes who could read the writing on the wall, so it was in India in the spring of '57.

Men saw the signs and could not read their meaning.

As in France, so in India, there were a few who understood, but they were scoffed at; the rest--the vast majority who held the reins of power--were blind.
Rosemary McClean discovered that her pony had gone lame, and was angry with the groom.

The groom ran away, and she put that down to native senselessness.

Duncan McClean sent one after another of the little native children to find him a man who would take a letter to Mount Abu.
The children went and did not come back again, and he put that down to the devil, who would seem to have reclaimed them.
Both of them saw the watchers, posted at every vantage-point, insolently wakeful; both of them knew that Jaimihr had placed them there.