Profiting from the pause, Davidson, whose temperament could withstand worse shocks, remonstrated in an undertone: "It's unreasonable to get so angry as that.

Even if he had run off with your cash-box--" The big hotel-keeper bent down and put his infuriated face close to Davidson's.
"My cash-box! My--he--look here, Captain Davidson! He ran off with a girl.

What do I care for the girl?
The girl is nothing to me." He shot out an infamous word which made Davidson start.

That's what the girl was; and he reiterated the assertion that she was nothing to him.
What he was concerned for was the good name of his house.

Wherever he had been established, he had always had "artist parties" staying in his house.