It was rather as if a worshipper in some highly ritualistic shrine, filled with appeals to sight and hearing, had unaccountably wandered off into a wayside chapel.

Lady Pickering felt convinced that this was mere vagrant curiosity on Gerald's part.

She felt convinced that he couldn't care for chapels.

She was so convinced that, moved to emphatic measures, she came into the open as it were, marched processions and waved banners before him, in order to remind him what the veritable church was for a person of taste.

Sometimes Gerald joined her, but sometimes he waved a friendly greeting and went into the chapel again.
So it was that Althea suddenly found herself involved in that mute and sinister warfare--an unavowed contest with another woman for possession of a man.