Abel Beechcroft, while reading in the library of his house in Lambeth, is disturbed when Hilda Scarve is led into the room by his butler Jukes. Etching by George Cruikshank, 1842.

Hilda is the daughter of the miser Mr Scarve, who had been befriended by Abel Beechcroft. Beechcroft lives in a house in Lambeth overlooking the River Thames. Hilda visits him to give him a letter from her late mother. His study contains paintings of the Good Samaritan, Timon of Athens, a landscape in the manner of Marco Ricci, and an oval portrait

The "copy of Rembrandt's Good Samaritan" is after a painting acquired as by Rembrandt by Louis XVI in 1785, and in the Louvre since then with attributions to various artists including Barent Fabritius and Constantijn van Renesse. Beechcroft's picture is in reverse, like the engraving of this composition by Dominique Vivant-Denon, 1795 (37.8 x 45.6 cm)