Lina, your brother was brought up in the West Country, was he not ?" Mrs.Mallet gave a weary nod.

"In North Devon," she answered; "on the wild stretch of moor about Hartland and Clovelly." Hilda Wade seemed to collect herself.

"Now, Mr.Le Geyt is essentially a Celt--a Celt in temperament," she went on; "he comes by origin and ancestry from a rough, heather-clad country; he belongs to the moorland.
In other words, his type is the mountaineer's.

But a mountaineer's instinct in similar circumstances is--what?
Why, to fly straight to his native mountains.

In an agony of terror, in an access of despair, when all else fails, he strikes a bee-line for the hills he loves; rationally or irrationally, he seems to think he can hide there.