CHAPTER VI
DOCTOR LEYDEN
VIRGINIA, my dear," said Sir Henry, "permit me to introduce my old friend, Dr. Leyden." He turned to the scientist. "Miss Moultrie has been for many years our daughter by adoption, Maurits, and she is soon to become doubly so by an even closer tie."
The naturalist bowed. "May your wishes be many and your wants few!" he said to Virginia.
"Thank you, Dr. Leyden," she answered. "There is one less of each now that I have met you."
"That alone is worth coming from the Orinoco to hear," answered Leyden with a flashing smile.
Dr. Leyden, traveler, collector, naturalist, and archæologist, was a man past middle age, but still in the prime of life. He was of medium height; a trifle heavy in build, but possessed of an alertness of motion due to the steady nerve tension of the short, strong muscles. One could scarcely think of him as relaxed, he would be tense, keen, alert, even in sleep. His face was Dutch in type; not of the stolid, square, phlegmatic character which is incorrectly accepted by most people as typical of the Hollander, but the cleanly chiseled, broad-browed, highly intelligent, and strikingly handsome face seen among the nobility of the Netherlands. With Leyden this fineness of feature was rendered more pleasing by the stamp of a
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