Shadows projected, they often were, without his knowing it, by an undue apprehension that things after all might not go so ideally well with Roderick.

When he understood his anxiety it vexed him, and he rebuked himself for taking things unmanfully hard.

If Roderick chose to follow a crooked path, it was no fault of his; he had given him, he would continue to give him, all that he had offered him--friendship, sympathy, advice.

He had not undertaken to provide him with unflagging strength of purpose, nor to stand bondsman for unqualified success.
If Rowland felt his roots striking and spreading in the Roman soil, Roderick also surrendered himself with renewed abandon to the local influence.

More than once he declared to his companion that he meant to live and die within the shadow of Saint Peter's, and that he cared little if he never again drew breath in American air.