Note: Usually interpreted as dramatic irony on human folly (as nothing happens outside bounds of possible) but a genre reading can't be ruled out.

Synopsis: A London policeman ("the incident ... could have happened nowhere else than in England", as on the Continent "judges are bound to try offenders and to sentence them in accordance with the letter of the law and not ... their shrewd common-sense and the dictates of their consciences") suspects a foreign fortune-teller of espionage or other crimes. His wife in disguise pays for a card reading that soon she would marry a rich man and move overseas. Summoned to a magistrate, who strongly disagrees on interpretation of individual cards, the fortune-teller tries a common-sense defense that a woman "with a glove torn", pretending to be better off and also younger than she obviously is wishes nothing but to marry; she ends up expelled. Yet, within a year the wife divorces the policeman for an Australian.