expression and looks so delicate. I think we should get on very well together, poor thing. I pity her much." After Princess Alice died in 1878, it was Maria Alexandrovna's turn to pity the British royal family. She invited her motherless relatives to visit during the holidays she spent with brother Alexander at Heiligenberg. It was during these visits that her second youngest son Sergei met his future wife, Alice's second daughter, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine. It was also here that Maria met Elisabeth's youngest surviving sister, Princess Alix, who would eventually become the devoted and ill-fated wife of Maria's eldest grandson, Emperor Nicholas II. A legend alleges that on a visit to Darmstadt, upon meeting Alix, Empress Maria turned to her ladies-in-waiting with the words, "Kiss her hand. That is your empress to be." Tsar Alexander had three children with Princess Dolgorukova, whom he moved into the Imperial Palace during Maria's final illness out of fear that she might become the target of assassins. The affair, in the face of the Tsarina's declining health, served to alienate the rest of his adult children, save their son Alexei and their daughter. When the Grand Duchess Marie made a visit to her mother in May 1880, she was horrified to learn of the imperial mistress' living arrangements and confronted her father. Courtiers spread stories that the dying Empress was forced to hear the noise of Catherine's children moving about overhead, but their rooms were actually far away from each other. After Maria Alexandrovna asked to meet her husband's children with Catherine, he brought their two older children, George and Olga, to her deathbed, where she kissed and blessed both children. Both rulers were in tears during the meeting. With her blessing, the couple entered into a morganatic marriage on . Empress Maria Alexandrovna died on 3 June 1880, aged 55. She was buried with full dignity with her children present and remembered for her wisdom and grace. In later years, Nicholas II's eldest daughter, Grand Duchess Olga, claimed that as a small child she saw the ghost of her great-grandmother, according to her nanny Margaretta Eagar. Issue Through her marriage with Alexander II, Maria Alexandrovna gave birth to and raised eight children, which consisted of six sons and two daughters: Honours : Dame of the Order of Queen Saint Isabel, 20 February 1861 : Dame of the Order