This was the first part of the postscript.  The second part warned Mr. Fairlie that Anne Catherick’s mental malady had been aggravated by her long freedom from control, and that the insane hatred and distrust of Sir Percival Glyde, which had been one of her most marked delusions in former times, still existed under a newly-acquired form.  The unfortunate woman’s last idea in connection with Sir Percival was the idea of annoying and distressing him, and of elevating herself, as she supposed, in the estimation of the patients and nurses, by assuming the character of his deceased wife, the scheme of this personation having evidently occurred to her after a stolen interview which she had succeeded in obtaining with Lady Glyde, and at which she had observed the extraordinary accidental likeness between the deceased lady and herself.  It was to the last degree improbable that she would succeed a second time in escaping from the Asylum, but it was just possible she might find some means of annoying the late Lady Glyde’s relatives with letters, and in that case Mr. Fairlie was warned beforehand how to receive them.

The postscript, expressed in these terms, was shown to Miss Halcombe when she arrived at Limmeridge.  There were also placed in her possession the clothes Lady Glyde had worn, and the other effects she had brought with her to her aunt’s house.  They had been carefully collected and sent to Cumberland by Madame Fosco.

Such was the posture of affairs when Miss Halcombe reached Limmeridge in the early part of September.

Shortly afterwards she was confined to her room by a relapse, her weakened physical energies giving way under the severe mental affliction from which she was now suffering.  On getting stronger again, in a month’s time, her suspicion of the circumstances described as attending her sister’s death still remained unshaken.  She had heard nothing in the interim of Sir Percival Glyde, but letters had reached her from Madame Fosco, making the most affectionate inquiries on the part of her husband and herself.  Instead of answering these letters, Miss Halcombe caused the house in St. John’s Wood, and the proceedings of its inmates, to be privately watched.

Nothing doubtful was discovered.  The same result attended the next investigations, which were secretly instituted on the subject of Mrs. Rubelle.  She had arrived in London about six months before with her husband.  They had come from Lyons, and they had taken a house in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, to be fitted up as a boarding-house for foreigners, who were expected to visit England in large numbers to see the Exhibition of 1851.  Nothing was known against husband or wife in the neighbourhood.  They were quiet people, and they had paid their way honestly up to the present time.  The final inquiries related to Sir Percival Glyde.  He was settled in Paris, and living there quietly in a small circle of English and French friends.