Hints concerning her romantic career crept into the press. Old scandals were remembered, always followed by accounts of her beauty discoveries. Her discoveries, with her portrait for trade-mark, became a part of the stock-in-trade of every chemist: Madame Josephine’s Hair Restorer; Madame Josephine’s Face Cream; Madame Josephine’s Nail Polish. At breakfast when you glanced through your paper, her face gazed out at you, saying, “YOU Can Be Always Young.” It was on the hoardings, on the buses, in your theatre program. It was as impossible to escape as conscience. From morning till night it followed you, always saying, “YOU Can Be Always Young.” The world became self-conscious. It took to examining its complexion. It went to The Beauty Palace out of curiosity, and stayed to spend money. Madame Josephine became the rage: a theme for dinner conversations--a Personage. CHAPTER XXVI--DREAMING OF LOVE The immediate outcome of this was money--more money than Eden Row had ever imagined. Mrs. Sheerug refused to leave Orchid Lodge. “I’ll help you splash,” she told Alonzo, “but I won’t move out of Orchid Lodge.” As a compromise, Orchid Lodge was re-decorated in violent colors, and a carriage and pair waited before it. Mrs. Sheerug used her carriage for hunting up invalids that she might dose them with medicines of her own invention. She inclined to the garish in her method of dress, wearing yellow feathers and green plush, as in the old days when Jimmie Boy had dashed to the window to make sketches of her for the faery-godmother. And to him she was a faery-godmother, for she bought his pictures and insisted on having an exhibition of them at The Beauty Palace. “Ah, my dear,” she would say, crossing her hands, “God sends us poverty that we may be kind when our money comes.” Was she happy? Teddy wondered. Sometimes he fancied that she coveted the days of careless uncertainty and happy-go-lucky comfort. One of her chief hobbies had been taken from her: it was no longer possible to get into debt And her gifts didn’t mean so much, now that her giving could be endless. It would be absurd for the wife of the great Alonzo Sheerug to produce black bottles from under her mantle and thrust them at people with the information that the contents would “build you up.” She had to send whole cases of wine now, and there wasn’t the same personal pleasure. She had saved the spare-room from the imagination of the decorators. More than once Teddy caught her there, shuffling about in her woolen slippers and plum-colored dressing-gown. She seemed more natural like that It was so that he loved her best.