In November 1903, Michael wrote to Beatrice telling her that he could not marry her. The situation was aggravated by a letter Beatrice then received from her elder sister Victoria Melita ("Ducky"), in which Michael was blamed for having callously initiated the doomed romance (when, a couple of years later Ducky, having divorced her first cousin Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, was told that remarriage to another first cousin, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, would likewise be forbidden by the Tsar, she refused to take no for an answer; the couple eloped into exile). The humiliated Beatrice was sent to Egypt to recover from heartbreak, but pined and wrote reproachful letters to Michael until 1905.