for her private island, Supreme Court heard yesterday.

Mrs. MacMillan, believed to be worth $700 million, said she was in a shop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when she heard businessman Michael DeGroote had accepted her price.

"I had mixed emotions at the time,'' she said. "I was relieved that my price had been met.

"And I remember sitting down in a chair and crying.'' Mrs. MacMillan is in court fighting to keep Perot's Island in Riddell's Bay. In December, 1990, she signed an agreement to sell it to Mr. DeGroote but changed her mind after therapy classes, run by Mrs. Sarah White, began meeting there.

Mrs. MacMillan says she was pushed into selling by realtors Cooper Associates and the Bank of Butterfield's real estate firm. But Mr. DeGroote says a deal is a deal.

Mrs. MacMillan told the court she felt pressure "emotionally'', from Elaine Darling of Cooper's in particular. Mrs. Darling had contacted her personally, which she did not like.

"Perhaps the most blatant coercion was at the time when I had said that the island was off the market and three days later the agents were trying to convince me to change my mind.

"There were lots of pressures from all sides. I was very vulnerable.'' Mrs.

MacMillan said other examples of coercion were "frequent'' visits by Mr.

DeGroote to the island, not appreciated by her.

"One such visit was at a time when I was standing on the balcony of the gatehouse watching Mr. DeGroote give an interview to the Press for some Toronto newspaper, expressing that this was his island and what he possessed.

"The resulting article spoke in detail about my fortune, my origins and how I had come to buy the island.'' Another time Mr. DeGroote arrived to interview her staff, and showed them a "video of his life''.

"It was done while I was away. The staff was very upset as a result.'' Then, in the last year, DeGroote had driven past the gatehouse cottage. "I was standing in the doorway and he remarked: `You've caught me'.'' Questioned by Mr. Andrew Martin, for Cooper's, she admitted Mr. DeGroote's visit to staff was after she accepted his offer on October 5, 1990. The newspaper interview could have been in the fall of 1990, she said.

Mr. DeGroote became a nuisance, she added.

The hearing continues today.