.

GINO FALCONE.
When I think of my mother now I do not see her as she appeared in any of the scenes that already I have set down.

There is one picture of her that is burnt as with an acid upon my memory, a picture which the mere mention of her name, the mere thought of her, never fails to evoke like a ghost before me.

I see her always as she appeared one evening when she came suddenly and without warning upon Falcone and me in the armoury of the citadel.
I see her again, a tall, slight, graceful woman, her oval face of the translucent pallor of wax, framed in a nun-like coif, over which was thrown a long black veil that fell to her waist and there joined the black unrelieved draperies that she always wore.

This sable garb was no mere mourning for my father.