Is there any way I can speed up this VBA algorithm?

I am looking to implement a VBA trie-building algorithm that is able to process a substantial English lexicon (~50,000 words) in a relatively short amount of time (less than 15-20 seconds). Since I am a C++ programmer by practice (and this is my first time doing any substantial VBA work), I built a quick proof-of-concept program that was able to complete the task on my computer in about half a second. When it came time to test the VBA port however, it took almost two minutes to do the same -- an unacceptably long amount of time for my purposes. The VBA code is below:

Node Class Module:

Public letter As String
Public next_nodes As New Collection
Public is_word As Boolean

Main Module:

Dim tree As Node

Sub build_trie()
    Set tree = New Node
    Dim file, a, b, c As Integer
    Dim current As Node
    Dim wordlist As Collection
    Set wordlist = New Collection
    file = FreeFile
    Open "C:\corncob_caps.txt" For Input As file
    Do While Not EOF(file)
        Dim line As String
        Line Input #file, line
        wordlist.add line
    Loop
    For a = 1 To wordlist.Count
        Set current = tree
        For b = 1 To Len(wordlist.Item(a))
            Dim match As Boolean
            match = False
            Dim char As String
            char = Mid(wordlist.Item(a), b, 1)
            For c = 1 To current.next_nodes.Count
                If char = current.next_nodes.Item(c).letter Then
                    Set current = current.next_nodes.Item(c)
                    match = True
                    Exit For
                End If
            Next c
            If Not match Then
                Dim new_node As Node
                Set new_node = New Node
                new_node.letter = char
                current.next_nodes.add new_node
                Set current = new_node
            End If
        Next b