"alice wondered a little at this, but she was too much in awe of the queen to disbelieve it".

what is the effect of the author's word choice in this sentence?

The words that the author used here give the reader the idea that the Queen is something truly extravagant. I'm guessing that something strange happened, making Alice "wonder a little" about what happened, but she was quickly enraptured by the Queen to put much more thought into the matter or to not believe it outright. I'm assuming this sentence is from Alice in Wonderland, and if you were to go further, you'd notice that Alice almost always notices and challenges the strange things happening in Wonderland. She knows when things are not as they should be, and little can distract her from that fact. Now, knowing that she let go of the thought that something wasn't as it should be, gives us the idea that the Queen was very powerful and mighty, making Alice believe in the untrue. At least, that's my understanding of it.

the second option.is correct

- "a nonrestrictive clause functions as a modifier to a noun (that is an object, person or concept). these clauses can be described by the following three options: it is set off by comas, it contains a subject and a verbs and it adds nonessential information to the sentence.

for example, in "here is bill gates, who confounded microsoft software company" we can identify "who confounded microsoft software company" as a nonrestrictive clause modifying the noun bill gates. this clause can be describes as a nonrestrictive clause because it is separated by a comma, it adds nonessential information to identify who bill gates is and it must contain both a subject (who) and a verb (confounded)."