They talked of Amy's husband, who, Arthur said, had died at Monte Carlo; and then he spoke of Amy's son, who was not present, and whom he seemed to have forgotten entirely, for when Mrs.Crawford said to him, 'You saw him on the night of your return home,' he looked at her in a perplexed kind of way, and if trying to recall something which had gone almost entirely from his mind.

It was this utter forgetfulness of people and events which was a marked feature of his insanity, if insane he were, and he knew it and struggled against it; and when Mrs.Crawford told him he had seen Harold he tried to recall him, and could not until the boy came in, flushed and excited from a race with Dick St.Claire through the crisp November wind, which had brought a bright color to his cheek and a sparkle to his eye.

Then Arthur remembered everything, and something of his old prejudice came back to him, and his manner was a little constrained as he talked to the boy, whose only fault was that Harold Hastings had been his father and that he bore his name.
Arthur did not stay long after Harold came in, but said good-morning to Mrs.Crawford and walked slowly away, going again to Amy's grave, and taking from it a few leaves of the ivy which was growing around the monument.

And this was all the intercourse he held with Mrs.Crawford, except to send her at Christmas a hundred dollars, which he said was for the boy Harold, to whom he had done an injustice.
After this he seldom went out, but gave himself heart and soul to the completion of his rooms, and when they were finished he settled down into the life of a recluse, seeing very few and talking but little, except occasionally to himself, when he seemed to be carrying on a conversation with some unseen visitant, who must have spoken in a foreign tongue or tongues, for sometimes it was French, sometimes Italian, and oftener German, in which he addressed his fancied guest, and neither Frank nor Dolly could understand a word of the strange jargon.

On the whole, however, he was very quiet and undemonstrative, and but for the habit of talking to himself and smelling odors where there were none, he would not have seemed very different from many peculiar people who are never suspected of being crazy.
If he were still expecting Gretchen, he gave no sign of it, except the place at his table always laid for her, and Frank was beginning to breathe freely, and to look upon his brother's presence in the house as not altogether unbearable, when an event occurred which excited all Shannondale, and for a time made Frank almost as crazy as his brother..