American Buds (1918)

Letters from the late mother of orphaned sisters Jane and Katherine seem to indicate that their father is Capt. Bob Dutton. Under orders from his superior, Colonel Harding, to acknowledge the children or quit the service, Dutton accepts responsibility for them. Shocked by his presumably checkered past, Cecile Harding, Dutton's fiancée and the colonel's daughter, breaks their engagement. One evening Jane surprises Capt. Robert Duncan, Dutton's rival for Cecile, stealing Bob's papers. Subsequently shot, the dying Duncan reveals that he is an Austrian agent, as well as the father of Katherine and Jane, having eloped years earlier with Ethel Harding, the colonel's older daughter. The colonel assumes the care of Jane and Katherine, and Dutton and Cecile are reconciled.