He realized within
the space of a few moments that the leisure Eve might have
claimed, the leisure he might have been tempted to devote to
her, was no longer his to dispose of--being already demanded
of him from a quarter that allowed of no refusal.
For the first rumbling of the political earthquake that was
to shake the country made itself audible beyond denial
on that morning of March 27th, when the news spread
through England that, in view of the disorganized state
of the Persian army and the Shah's consequent inability
to suppress the open insurrection of the border tribes in
the north-eastern districts of Meshed, Russia, with a great
show of magnanimity, had come to the rescue by
despatching a large armed force from her military station
at Merv across the Persian frontier to the seat of the
disturbance.
To many hundreds of Englishmen who read their papers on
that morning this announcement conveyed bat little. That
there is such a country as Persia we all know, that English
interests predominate in the south and Russian interests
in the north we have all superficially understood from
childhood; but in this knowledge, coupled with the fact that
Persia is comfortably far away, we are apt to rest content.
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