Final answer:
Without explicit reference to Laura in the provided texts, the question cannot be answered directly. However, the excerpts suggest a thematic presence of pretense and undisclosed activities among characters in their respective stories.
Step-by-step explanation:
The presented snippets lack explicit context to ascertain where Laura pretends to go, and what she is actually doing, as Laura's name is not explicitly referenced within these excerpts.
However, drawing upon thematic analysis across the diverse textual instances provided, it's indicated that various characters have been engaging in actions where appearances and reality differ. These underlying actions often involve characters either engaging in secretive behavior or withholding information from others, which can be inferred as forms of pretense or deception about their true activities or experiences.
Characters are shown to mask their true experiences or feelings, like Elizabeth's vague responses to her family's questions about her activities, which could imply that she is not being entirely truthful about her time at 'school' and 'Europe'. Similarly, other characters depicted appear to grapple with secretive or unaccounted for actions, suggesting an environment where honesty and openness are challenged.
We can therefore conclude that characters within these various narratives often navigate a social dynamic filled with pretense, attempting to reconcile their external actions with their internal experiences or undisclosed intentions.