I was forever imagining my wedding day.

My bridegroom was always tall and dark, with piercing black eyes and a kingly air, and I always pictured myself as wearing a pink satin dress and being married in church.

Sometimes fate parted us at the altar and sometimes we lived happily ever afterward.

I used to plan that on the day of my wedding I would lock myself in my room, put on my pink satin dress and sit all day in rapt meditation.

I would eat nothing, and see no one, not even father, until the moment when I swept grandly out into the hall and down the stairs to my carriage.