“Well, what did he want?”
“Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead; that he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich – merely that – nothing more.”
“I! – rich?”
“Yes, you, rich – quite an heiress.”
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 33. Jane is astonished to learn from St. John that she has inherited a fortune of twenty thousand pounds from her late uncle John Eyre. There is a certain irony here, as the despised impoverished orphan child Jane becomes an heiress and more successful than her spoiled Reed cousins.