That's the name of the block, not a summary of Jane Eyre's story, though it could be. After all, unlucky Jane did quite a bit of rambling as a lonely young woman, if not actually an old maid, before she finally won her Rochester in the end.
I've seen other blocks by this name, as well as this block done differently. In my version, the small triangles sit on top of the large triangles like a crown, pointing towards the center of the block. This is the way it's done in the antique quilt in Maggi McCormick Gordon's American Folk Art Quilts. This is a gorgeous book, not a pattern book, but an album of fabulous antique quilts, with commentary by my favorite quilt historian. The book includes piecing directions for blocks from several of the quilts, but gets the piecing of Old Maid's Ramble wrong (one strip of bias squares points the wrong way ... and besides, the colors of the sample are even uglier than mine!). No matter; I LOVE this book.
The other alternative is pictured in Maggie Malone's must-have book of quilt blocks, 5,500 Quilt Block Designs (block #1182). In this version, the small triangles point away from the block center, as in a Lost Ships block.
Now I just have to sew my blocks together, turning every other block so that the big vanilla triangles are next to the big brown floral triangles. Then the borders.
To be continued ....