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[She] had kindled the callow fancy of the most idle and shiftless of all
the village lads, and had conceived for this Howard Carpenter one of
those absurd and extravagant passions which a handsome country boy of
twenty one sometimes inspires in a plain, angular, spectacled woman of
thirty. (Willa Cather, "A Wagner Matinee")
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Umm I think it is A..... u might want another persons feedback
The answer is gait.
Definition of gait : a person's manner of walking
I believe what this passage foreshadows is that C. Rome will suffer danger and destruction.
You can see in the excerpt that no good things are happening - there is a fire, and something is burning, and people are afraid - so obviously, it doesn't mean that it is going to prosper or be renewed, when something so terrible is happening. One slave cannot destroy an empire, which is why that is incorrect too.