But her glance had just fallen on the dray, a heavy, low conveyance, loaded with two blocks of stone, which five strong horses found difficulty in drawing. These two enormous masses, high and broad, a colossal lump fit to bar the line, stood there before her; and abruptly a look of covetousness came into her eyes, accompanied by a mad desire to take and place them on the rails. The gate was wide open, the five steaming, panting cattle were there waiting.
"What is the matter with you this morning?" resumed Cabuche. "You look quite funny."
Then Flore spoke.
"My mother died last night," said she.
He uttered a friendly exclamation of grief, and putting down his whip, took both her hands and pressed them in his own.
"Oh! my poor Flore!" he sighed. "It is only what one might have expected for a long time, but it is hard all the same. Then she is there. I will go and look at her, for we should have ended by agreeing, but for this misfortune."
He walked slowly with her to the house, but on the threshold he cast a glance towards his horses. In one sentence she set his mind at rest.
"There is no fear of them moving," she said. "And, besides, the express is a long way off."
She lied. Her experienced ear had just caught, in the gentle rustle of the country, the sound of the express leaving Barentin station. Another five minutes, and it would be there. It would issue from the cutting at a hundred yards from the level crossing.
While the quarryman stood in the room of the dead woman, feeling very much affected, with his thoughts adverting to Louisette and oblivious of everything else, Flore remained outside, in front of the window, listening to the distant regular puffing of the engine as it approached nearer and nearer. Suddenly she remembered Misard: he would see her, he would prevent her; and she felt a pang in the chest when, turning round, she could not perceive him in his box. But she discovered him on the other side of the house, digging up the ground at the foot of the masonry round the well, unable to overcome his searching mania, and doubtless all at once taken with the conviction that the hoard must be there. Entirely absorbed by his blind, sullen passion, he searched, searched. And this was her last excitation. Events themselves urged her on. One of the horses began to neigh, while the locomotive, at the other end of the cutting, puffed very loudly, like a person hastening along in a hurry.