But Adelaide did not understand what was meant by studying appearances.

She was very happy, very proud of her door; she had assisted Macquart to knock the stones from the wall and had even mixed the mortar so that the work might proceed the quicker; and she came with childish delight to inspect the work by daylight on the morrow--an act which was deemed a climax of shamelessness by three gossips who observed her contemplating the masonry.

From that date, whenever Macquart reappeared, it was thought, as no one then ever saw the young woman, that she was living with him in the hovel of the Impasse Saint-Mittre.
The smuggler would come very irregularly, almost always unexpectedly, to Plassans.

Nobody ever knew what life the lovers led during the two or three days he spent there at distant intervals.

They used to shut themselves up; the little dwelling seemed uninhabited.