A young girl, dressed all in white, stood at the ambassador’s side, but he paid her no attention, so delighted was he in welcoming the two lads. She smiled happily upon the scene, while her gloved hand plucked her father’s arm gently to remind him of her presence. The passing crowd glanced admiringly at the group, and especially at the graceful American girl. The ambassador was still oblivious of her. His kindly face beamed with pleasure, and he was loath to give up the sturdy brown hands within his own. Then came a sudden pause, and the smile on Mr. Tillotson’s face died suddenly away. His thoughts had quickly traveled far off to the Philippine Islands, where he had last seen these young men beside him. He had gone there to bring away the body of an only boy--a son whom he had loved, but who had grieved his father’s heart by his wild and erratic life. A soldier’s grave had sealed within it his boy and all the bitterness that had been in the father’s breast for him. And these young men, barely more than boys, had been important actors in the closing tragedy of that son’s life. One of them had led a forlorn hope in an endeavor to save him from the Filipino traitor who had taken his life, and yet there this boy stood--Philip Perry--in the bright sunlight, and he would never see his son again. But his boy had been a soldier, and had died a soldier’s death. The joy of the present must not be marred. The ambassador was being attentively observed by the young girl at his elbow; she had seen his keen joy upon greeting these two striking young American officers, and then almost immediately had seen the smile fade and his shoulders perceptibly droop, and her womanly instinct was at once alert to help him overcome this burden of sorrow and dead hope. “Father, I shall have to introduce myself, if you forget your parental duty,” she whispered softly in his ear. This brought the wandering thoughts of the sorrowing man to the scene before him. He was again his jovial self. His arm went out and about the girlish waist and he drew her gently to his side. “Why, child, I thought you were with the Kingsleys,” he said. “My daughter, Helen,” he added proudly. The midshipmen bowed. Phil felt a deep blush mount to his face as he took her proffered fingers. He had expected to see a child, and here was a grown up young lady. Yet he assured himself that he was not sorry. “I feel as if I had known you both for years,” she said cordially. “We came in a motor,” she added to her father’s exclamation. “That was how we arrived before you.” Phil cast a swift glance of inquiry at her, and the quick look of understanding in Helen Tillotson’s face brought again the blush to his cheek. She had been one of the two ladies in the car he had stopped. Then she would know the name of the man who had run down the sailor. “I don’t want to go into the receiving tent with the Kingsleys, when I can go in with my own countrymen,” Helen continued coaxingly to her father.