Providence has blessed my endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 21. Jane reads a letter from her Uncle John who wished to adopt her as his child after his successful enterprise in Madeira, Portugal. The letter was sent three years earlier to Mrs. Reed, but she concealed it from Jane. It foreshadows that Jane will come into a substantial inheritance.